Happy Memorial Day

Fight for what you love.

Let's pray for those who've given their lives for this country today. And also pray for those currently serving. May they all come back home soon.

Biblical Research Tool includes the work of Chesterton and Belloc

I can't remember whether you've linked to this on the blog or not, or whether I might have seen it in the "Chesterton is Everywhere" category of Trifles in Gilbert magazine, but I wanted to make sure you heard about Biblia Clerus.
It's an awesome Biblical research tool published by the Congregation for Clergy at the Vatican. The link. It contains all sorts of commentaries on Scripture, and other useful tools such as Catechisms, Magisterial documents, Patristical sources, and more. You can download multiple language packages, which have various contents depending on what works have been translated into what languages (thus, there may be some Aquinas works available only in French from the Latin, for example). This includes packages of several ancient languages with Bible translations in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.

Interestingly for us Chestertonians, under the English language package is a subheading entitled "Literature." Significantly, two authors have been included at this phase; whether more will be added later is unknown, but the first choices are telling: Chesterton and Belloc. Several of each author's works are available in full text, packaged with the download.

I thought you and your readers might find it interesting. The software is a remarkable asset in many respects. The addition of Chesterton is icing on the cake... and the revolution continues!

Thanks, Joe G.

Ignatius Insight Podcast: Chesterton and Orthodoxy

Special guest is Dale Ahlquist. Some of you may know him.

Demons and Democracy: the Strange Color of the Nearby

(If you are reading along: Orthodoxy Chapter IV "The Ethics of Elfland" first five paragraphs CW1:249-252)

I told you last week there would be no demonism on our adventure into Elfland... and there won't be. Except in one punning way, which is one of the really beloved lines spoken by Father Brown. You will perhaps disagree. I think it reveals his humility, and the too-easily forgotten fact that priests must themselves confess their sins:

"I am a man," answered Father Brown gravely; "and therefore have all devils in my heart."
[GKC, "The Hammer Of God" in The Innocence of Father Brown]

One of the prayers the priest says at Holy Mass hints at this authentic view of the priesthood:

"Accept O Holy Father, Almighty and Eternal God, this spotless host, which I, your unworthy servant, offer to You, my living and true God, to atone for my numberless sins, offenses, and negligences; on behalf of all here present and likewise for all faithful Christians living and dead, that it may profit me and them as a means of salvation to life everlasting. Amen.

But we are not here to examine liturgy... but rather demon... ahem, excuse me. I mean democracy.

No, not as in the opposite of "Republican"! (And I thought I was skating on thin ice with the reference to magic. Hee hee.)

But - as I warned you last time, you must pay very close attention to the words here. There will be some words you know, and perhaps have some strong feelings on - like "democracy" and "liberal" and "tradition". Most importantly you need to know that these terms are being used in their full, classical, "rich" or perhaps "proper" sense (in heraldry, something "proper" means it is shown in its true colors), and emphatically not as political terms.

You are puzzled. We have crossed a bridge, into a world which I have rather carefully avoided naming (though you are all writing "May 22 - entering Elfland" down in your hiker log books). You thought we would be meeting strange, remarkable, unexpected, surprising creatures - hobbits and elves or dwarves (dwarfs, if you are not a Tolkien person) or maybe Milo or Bastian or that Poppins woman - or at least Spock or E.T. or even Mr. Potter (it is a wonderful life, you know?) And instead I bring up GKC's drudgery of what sounds like government or maybe education. Oh, how surprised you'll be... we shall indeed meet some remarkable creatures. You must be bold... and you will be surprised!
Wave wand here if you feel bold.

Now, having mentioned Milo, the bored hero of The Phantom Tollbooth, you will be surprised, as I was, in what we find in the very first sentence from our chapter:

When the business man rebukes the idealism of his office-boy, it is commonly in some such speech as this: "Ah, yes, when one is young, one has these ideals in the abstract and these castles in the air; but in middle age they all break up like clouds, and one comes down to a belief in practical politics, to using the machinery one has and getting on with the world as it is."
[CW1:249, emphasis added]

If you've never read that book, you must know that "The Castle in the Air" is the prison to which the princesses of Sweet Rhyme and Pure Reason were banished, and the demons guard the path to it... Ah, so you are starting to feel something? Good, good. It's starting, then.

The start is a bit slow. As usual, GKC uses a rather complex analogy, drawn from his own late Victorian youth, and the world he knows, to try to explain something even more complex. It is a kind of parable, laden as usual with verbal fireworks, and a confusing term or two, but it contains something striking, which is like chrome. For "the strong chromium" as a friend of mine says, "has the strange color of the nearby". Yes, chrome and so many metals act as mirrors when polished. And this is the first kind of magic GKC reveals to us.

We must understand what GKC is doing. He now has "to trace the roots of my personal speculation" - that is, explain how he started to get to HIS view of things, which is so different from what we saw in the previous chapters. He believes in "Liberalism" - but not in "Liberals". Note! I have no time to give you the grand explanation of what these words meant in England of 1908 - but that precision hardly matters to us. You will see it clearly, as in a mirror (!) very shortly, as GKC proceeds. But... if you find this too confusing, read these lines:

They said that I should lose my ideals and begin to believe in the methods of practical politicians. Now, I have not lost my ideals in the least; my faith in fundamentals is exactly what it always was. What I have lost is my old childlike faith in practical politics. ...

I was brought up a Liberal, and have always believed in democracy, in the elementary liberal doctrine of a self-governing humanity. If any one finds the phrase vague or threadbare, I can only pause for a moment to explain that the principle of democracy, as I mean it, can be stated in two propositions. The first is this: that the things common to all men are more important than the things peculiar to any men. Ordinary things are more valuable than extraordinary things; nay, they are more extraordinary. Man is something more awful than men; something more strange. The sense of the miracle of humanity itself should be always more vivid to us than any marvels of power, intellect, art, or civilization. The mere man on two legs, as such, should be felt as something more heartbreaking than any music and more startling than any caricature.
[CW1:249-250]

(Yes, there's a ref. to Manalive where a telegram reads "Man Found Alive With Two Legs" - what you haven't read it yet? Get busy.)

Verbal fireworks? Or words on fire doing work? You will hunt very hard to find a real politician, in either England of 1908 or America of 2008, who acts on these terms, who sees the miracle of humanity.

But (you say) I thought you said it wasn't going to be about politics?

GKC dragged it in, not me. But proceed, and be surprised:

This is the first principle of democracy: that the essential things in men are the things they hold in common, not the things they hold separately. And the second principle is merely this: that the political instinct or desire is one of these things which they hold in common. Falling in love is more poetical than dropping into poetry. The democratic contention is that government (helping to rule the tribe) is a thing like falling in love, and not a thing like dropping into poetry. It is not something analogous to playing the church organ, painting on vellum, discovering the North Pole (that insidious habit), looping the loop, being Astronomer Royal, and so on. For these things we do not wish a man to do at all unless he does them well. It is, on the contrary, a thing analogous to writing one's own love-letters or blowing one's own nose. These things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly. I am not here arguing the truth of any of these conceptions; I know that some moderns are asking to have their wives chosen by scientists, and they may soon be asking, for all I know, to have their noses blown by nurses. I merely say that mankind does recognize these universal human functions, and that democracy classes government among them. In short, the democratic faith is this: that the most terribly important things must be left to ordinary men themselves - the mating of the sexes, the rearing of the young, the laws of the state. This is democracy; and in this I have always believed.
[CW1:250]

Now, the well-read Chestertonian will immediately hear the echo of a very famous quote: "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." [GKC, speaking of Woman in What's Wrong With the World CW4:199] And, for completeness, this idea of "blowing your own nose" also appears in Heretics, and I leave it for anyone who wants a nice workout side hike; you can find it in CW1:203.

Again, you are wondering: where is the magic? Where are the strange beings?

YOU ARE SEEING THEM. Elvish zoologists call them "humans". (You'll find out about the magic soon enough.) GKC supposes that there is some fundamental law which underlies all sorts of things - which he sums up in the idea that we ought to do certain things for ourselves, as much as we possibly can. (In another context, this idea is a part of the design method called "Subsidiarity" - an ancient idea, and part of Catholic Social Teaching, and about which I have written elsewhere.) But as a broadly used term in government, not delving into the depths or distinctions of some governing mechanism, "democracy" means "rule by the people" - the people choose the arrangements. Like Athens of long ago... Ah, so nice. The splendid happy life of ancient Greece and all that. Houses, Senates, meetings, elections... Ahem. But GKC does not sit and bask in the Mediterranean warmth. He reveals some real depths to this supposedly well-known term, and gives us some singularly rich insights:

But there is one thing that I have never from my youth up been able to understand. I have never been able to understand where people got the idea that democracy was in some way opposed to tradition. It is obvious that tradition is only democracy extended through time. It is trusting to a consensus of common human voices rather than to some isolated or arbitrary record. The man who quotes some German historian against the tradition of the Catholic Church, for instance, is strictly appealing to aristocracy. He is appealing to the superiority of one expert against the awful authority of a mob. It is quite easy to see why a legend is treated, and ought to be treated, more respectfully than a book of history. The legend is generally made by the majority of people in the village, who are sane. The book is generally written by the one man in the village who is mad. Those who urge against tradition that men in the past were ignorant may go and urge it at the Carlton Club, along with the statement that voters in the slums are ignorant. It will not do for us. If we attach great importance to the opinion of ordinary men in great unanimity when we are dealing with daily matters, there is no reason why we should disregard it when we are dealing with history or fable. Tradition may be defined as an extension of the franchise. Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our groom; tradition asks us not to neglect a good man's opinion, even if he is our father. I, at any rate, cannot separate the two ideas of democracy and tradition; it seems evident to me that they are the same idea. We will have the dead at our councils. The ancient Greeks voted by stones; these shall vote by tombstones. It is all quite regular and official, for most tombstones, like most ballot papers, are marked with a cross.
[CW1:250-251]

If you don't already know it, "tradition" comes from a Latin verb, trado which means "I hand over, hand on, pass on" - and "I entrust". So many things you have, and think of as your own, have actually been handed on to you, often with great expense and at great effort on the part of others who were holding them in trust... you are so used to them you have forgotten where they came from - and (alas) you are most often utterly unaware of the power, the intense and extraordinary thing (for which "magic" might be the only good term) that you are capable of wielding with them.

What, for example? Do you really need me to tell you? OK: by what power are you reading this? (I don't mean the computer; I mean your ability to read, and to understand what I have written.) Your language is a tradition. No revolutionary, no "liberal" - in our modern sense - can escape it. Every science, every field of study presupposes language as a basis for its work; in that sense, even the hardest of the hard sciences is just another Liberal Art.

Ah. But consider this sentence again: "Tradition is the democracy of the dead." Are you starting to feel something powerfully magical here? Not just the idea of fairy tale, of some fanciful story told in the nursery. No; the idea that something - ah, like a magic wand - something almost unimaginably powerful was given to you long ago - given as your very own inheritance - and you've always had it. But you never really paid any attention to it, never thought of it as important: that odd wooden stick you've carried, dangling from your belt, or the sparks that flew out when your hand is near it... You don't like that hint of the "m" word? Then think of a pencil in your pocket, and its graphite smears on your hand. (Milo is given such a wand by the Mathemagician.) Not personal enough? Then how about speech? You do not even understand the power of your tongue? Why are so many powerful things attributed to speech? (Read the Epistle of St. James for details!) You have indeed inherited rich, oh, so rich, gifts. You abandon or neglect them at your peril.

One more paragraph brings us to the end of today's leg of our journey, and it is a very elegant summary of today's topic:

I have first to say, therefore, that if I have had a bias, it was always a bias in favour of democracy, and therefore of tradition. Before we come to any theoretic or logical beginnings I am content to allow for that personal equation; I have always been more inclined to believe the ruck of hard-working people than to believe that special and troublesome literary class to which I belong. I prefer even the fancies and prejudices of the people who see life from the inside to the clearest demonstrations of the people who see life from the outside. I would always trust the old wives' fables against the old maids' facts. As long as wit is mother wit it can be as wild as it pleases.
[CW1:251-2]

That word "ruck" is not a typo. (Yes, I had to look it up; I like to look things up, it's fun, you can find so many other things while you are looking!) "Ruck" means "the undistinguished multitude, the crowd of ordinary persons or things". It is one of GKC's favourite topics - you can find all kinds of references throughout GKC's writing to "The Common Man" - there's even a book called that.

GKC wants us, just to begin with, to see ourselves in a mirror (the magic thing with the strange color of the nearby!) It is magic, not because of the mirror, but because of us. We are unusual, we are marvels, we are extraordinary - because we are simply ordinary. And we have not even ventured into preternature (the land of fairy and magic), much less supernature (the Land of the Living, where He dwells in Whose image we are made.)

So - the next time you see a mirror, stop and behold the image and the likeness of God. A broken, sad, weak, confused, often whiney, nasty, mean and rude image, perhaps insanely preferring a demon as a model - but still His image: "For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King." [GKC, Charles Dickens CW15:44] Nothing in the kosmos, except the Most Blessed Sacrament, is as holy as a human being. (Today, for much of the world, is the feast of Corpus Christi, which is transferred to this coming Sunday in the U.S.) Father Brown hints at this great credal mystery:

"It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can't see things as they are. Anything that anybody talks about, and says there's a good deal in it, extends itself indefinitely like a vista in a nightmare. ... all because you are frightened of four words: 'He was made Man.' "
[GKC, "The Oracle of the Dog" in The Incredulity of Father Brown]

Yes - one of the effects of reading GKC is we start seeing things as they are. Even in mirrors.

--Dr. Thursday

PS After writing this - and I did it AFTER lunch this time: I find that I have not been of much help at all on this leg. I shall ask you to read GKC's five paragraphs by yourself, and think about them. They are worth it. You will find yourself in awe of such company as we have, both living, and traditional.

A Contemplation of Humor

The Circe Institute Conference has announced its speakers. If you live near Houston, you should attend.

Calling All Poets Planning to Attend the Annual Chesterton Conference in St. Paul this June

Rob M sends the blog this request:

As the convention is fast approaching, it occurs to me that there are several poets among the regular attendees.

I would like to see if we could together arrange some Ballades for if not the banquet, the wild bacchanal that inevitably follows it.

All poets wishing to respond to the call of the wild Ballade please ring me and I'll put you in touch with Rob. Thanks!

Contributing to the Blog

OK, here's the sad news: I can't make the conference. WAAHHH! Yes, I'm crying. Now I'm over it.

The great news is, the whole thing is being recorded and put on CDs.

And as blogmistress, I think I need to get copies of these CDs in order to provide you here with good coverage and conversation about the conference talks, don't you?

Today's post is a bleg (that's a blog beg) for you to contribute to the American Chesterton Society today. Please give generously, and specify that your contribution is to go to the BLOG. (Besides getting me those CDs, it will really surprise Dale Ahlquist) That's this, what you're reading right now. If you'd like coverage of the conference (and I'll be linking to my favorite live-bloggers, too), conversations about Orthodoxy and the other topics covered at the conference, please take a moment and help out the ACS now.

Thanks are the highest form of praise, and we thank you for being here.

GKC and the Saturday Evening Post

Saturday Evening Post
October 16, 1948
Vol. 211 Issue 16, Pg. 181

H/T: David Z.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Introductory: The Bridge to Elfland

Today, the Thursday in the octave of Pentecost, we come down from the "foothills" of Orthodoxy - what GKC calls the "rough review of recent thought" which is madness (the Maniac, chapter 1), as it is centered on self-destruction (the Suicide of Thought, chapter 2).

And lo: we find a bridge. Bridges could easily occupy several bloggs full of writers, whether one approaches from their science, their engineering, their poetry, their art, their symbolic significance....

Or, as GKC might say, bridges can be viewed as the Common Man views them: in the simple, commonplace sense that they provide a way of getting across chasms, rivers, and other such obstacles.

Sometimes the simple and obvious thing defeats us. (It ought to be the other way around: we ought to be using the simple and obvious to defeat our - uh - opposition.) In this next chapter, perhaps one of GKC's greatest and richest writings, we shall see how magic - yes, real, everyday, honest, homely, fairy-tale magic - can be used in this way. (Oh, are you bothered by that "m" word? Lest you misunderstand, I assure you: there is NO danger of demonism here. See my PS at the end.)

But the bridge before us beckons onward, to a wide and lovely land where we shall start our real quest, because, as we heard a week or so ago, "It is time we gave up looking for questions and began looking for answers." [CW1:241]

Wands out, everyone, and let us proceed.
Click wand here; no spell word is required.

The chapter we are entering is called "The Ethics of Elfland". All the lit'ry folk in the audience (you can tell them from the ink stains on their fingers), and the few philosophers who are still with us, will cheer, expecting this will get into some esoteric discussions of truth, fantasy and fiction. And all the scientists moan. (There are SOME scientists out there, I hope; someone has to be turning the crank to keep this network - uh - networking, and your lights shining. I don't count, as I'm on the hike with you! Then again, even the liberal arts folk have web pages now, and use laser printers, how curious.) As I said, the scientists moan, because they think magic and ethics and all that philosophy is boring. How surprised both sides will be! But I am getting ahead of myself.

I have, in the course of my blogging, often mentioned the works of Father Stanley Jaki, a great Chestertonian, a historian of science, and author of several dozen books, including the excellent little tome called Chesterton a Seer of Science. It contains a most important study of this particular chapter, and from it you will learn that about 1/3 of this "elvish" chapter of GKC was reprinted in Great Essays in Science, a title in the Pocket Library, edited by Martin Gardner (a name well-known in science and math circles). As Fr. Jaki revealed,

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, Chesterton: A Seer of Science, 14]

Now, of course, the moans and cheers from the two realms reverse, with the additional effect of a distinct murmur of confusion.

Well, is GKC crazy? (all that talk of Hanwell earlier, hmm...) What is he talking about? Is this science or magic? The real world or the elvish one?

Yes, that's exactly right. (That's the Boolean Yes, if you know what I mean: it's what the kids say when Mom asks if they want ice cream OR cake!) As I said, we are entering into a lovely, beautiful, amazing - and challenging part of our journey.

But I am talking about GKC, not Jaki. I highly recommend Jaki's book, especially for insight into this particular chapter, and the whole intellectual edifice of GKC, but I dare not go too far into it at present. (It's much like fudge, or donuts, or whatever sweet you delight in... you want to keep eating more... I 've got to stop writing these before lunch.) Ahem.

I said there is a bridge here, and I have intentionally provoked all the audience about it, because I, like GKC, am intent on his great engineering project:

"The rebuilding of this bridge between science and human nature is one of the greatest needs of mankind. We have all to show that before we go on to any visions or creations we can be contented with a planet of miracles."
[GKC The Defendant 75]

Incidentally, I first read that GKC quote in the aforementioned book by Jaki! But it is a magic bridge, and dangerous, as all bridges are. The chasm it crosses is of human make, after all, and so it is much worse than any merely natural division.

GKC gives this name, the Ethics of Elfland, because he wants to give us something as one gives to a child. (And now you MUST hear those ancient words: "Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." [Mt 18:3]) We need to sit together, yes, the scientists beside the lit'ry folk, and hear Uncle Gilbert tell us a story... "Will there be dragons?" Certainly. "Will there be real trees?" Oh yes. "Will we be there too?" Why, of course. (And it's a good story, I've heard it before...) You will learn as children do, about reality, and about right and wrong... no! it is NOT a sermon! Erase that thought. It is NOT that kind of tale! It is a story, about a marvellous world. (Will anyone recognize it, I wonder...)

Well, I don't want you to be confused here. This chapter is not in the form of a story. GKC keeps to his wandering wonder of words, marching to unheard music... But the music I hear (in the key of "G") is much like that famous "Promenade" from Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", a cumbrous but bold waddle in alternate 5/4 and 6/4 signatures, as GKC stops to look at the pictures - of the real world... and hopes we might waddle along with him and see, and admire...

You may feel, as you enter into this chapter, that it is all verbal fireworks and no fusion. Fusion, you know, is the great power source of the universe: it is what makes the sun light up:

Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are!

Atomic fusion makes you shine,
Giving us your light so fine...
Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are.

Now to you our eyes we lift,
Thanking God for His great gift,
Twinkle twinkle little star:
We know much of what you are.
[from "Stellar Mechanics for Kids" one of my many unpublished works.]

Ahem. But actually the fireworks are works, even if they are not always firey. As you saw, even during the boring parts of the previous chapters, we are advancing. We shall see more of this very lovely, dangerous, and interesting country, the Elvish world wherein we live... but there is something still greater ahead.

GKC begins his serious work in this nursery "fairy tale" place because he is "now to trace the roots of my personal speculation" [CW1:249] and he finds these roots, not surprisingly, in the fairy tales from his early years. Lovely and thoughtful and rich in ideas, delighting the lit'ry realm... AND! At the same time, he gives, (as Jaki indicates) great, stable, reliable underpinnings to the logical and mechanical and scientific - not by taking away, but by adding...

Not either/or, but both/AND - for such is the Boolean Yes.

For he is a bridge builder. The bridge is splendid, but the other side awaits! Hurry! Let's go!

--Dr. Thursday

PS. I fear I ought to put some kind of explanation about use of "magic", and put it down here so it will be short. (though I will most likely fail in that too!)

The delight I have in telling you about magic is because it is exquisitely relevant to GKC's title. For as I use it, (and perhaps GKC too) "magic" refers to permission, not method. "Magic" is really just another word for "authority". If you are relying on "the proper authority" for your actions (however be the precise method of their enacting), those actions are therefore good. If, however you resort to the wrong "authority" (a pretender to, or a usurper of, the real authority) then those actions are bad. This is all spelled out (no pun intended) in Biringuccio's Pirotechnia... Hence GKC says "Ethics" - for his story is not just for mere delight (which is good too), but primarily for teaching about good - hence about truth.

One more word I must add here, the word "occult", which is from the Latin for hidden, NOT for evil. When the earth shadows the moon during a lunar eclipse, the moon is occulted, or hidden. Many things are occult, especially nowadays. The means by which your computer or your car works... most likely these are hidden from you. (Do YOU know about finite state machines or semiconductors or distributors or carburetors?) In philosophical terms, even a magnet or the substance called AMBER are said to be occult - no, not because we somehow think they are "demonic" - but because the means of their workings are hidden:

...we have to go on using the Greek
name of amber as the only name of electricity because we have no notion what is the real name or nature of
electricity.
[GKC, The Common Man 170]

Yes, the Greek word "Elektron" means "amber"; and "electricity" means no more than "the strange thing amber does". Sure, we know lots about them now, and can use them in marvellous ways, as your reading this demonstrates, but they are still mysterious, and certainly not simple to explain. You need to think about this, and about words, very carefully, or you will FALL OFF THE BRIDGE.

(No we are NOT going into "magic" like you may have read in - uh... well, let that remain occult. Perhaps we'll talk more, but elsewhere, and after you've read the chapter. Not here and now.)

Please, don't get worried here. You have no cause to worry. GKC (and his awkward assistant who is writing this) wants you to receive a good gift, as one gives something safe and beneficial to a child... for "If you then being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more will your Father who is in heaven, give good things to them that ask him?" [Mt 7:11] But do watch your step as we cross the bridge...

One more thing, most unrelated. I mentioned Martin Gardner... He is quite old, and as yet is not quite convinced about the truth the GKC strived so hard to present in this and other books. Please pray for him.

Hear Lepanto sung

I found this one by Maureen O'Brien at the Maria Lectrix blog.

It's Lepanto set to an original tune. It's quite nice.

Mark

Thanks, Mark. This may also help if you want your youngster (or yourself) to memorize the poem.

Traveling

Our family travels a lot. Which is why sometimes my posts are a bit haphazard. But this weekend, we got to travel to St. Louis, where a Chestertonian friend and his family live, which is a nice benefit of travel.

Some of you know Kevin O'Brien from the conferences. He was Hillaire Belloc one year, doing a dramatic reading of Belloc's "Don" poem, which had me in stitches.

And two years ago, Kevin was the poet in "The Surprise" which he reprised for EWTN.

A few years ago, Kevin, already a professional actor with his own troup called Upstage Productions, started another group, Theater of the Word, for actors trying to live their faith through the theater.

I'm excited to let you in on a secret: EWTN is producing a 13 week series of shows by Theater of the Word, and they are filming right now.

Please pray for these actors as they work to share their faith through the medium of television.

Theater of the Word won't air for about a year, but we have something wonderful to look forward to, including the Bellocian recital I mentioned above, which I look forward to.

Happy Birthday Christianity!

...the Lateran Church is full of interesting objects; but of different
sorts that interest different people. I need not describe the only too
tempestuous statuary that stands all down the middle; in the last, and
possibly the worst, but at least the most boisterous stage of the
Baroque. The general impression is that the Twelve Apostles always
preferred to stand in a draught, but that they inhabited a curious
country where the wind blew in all the opposite ways at once. Perhaps
some such licence might be allowed to the supernatural wind of
Pentecost, which was truly a wind of liberty in the sense of a wind of
isolating individualism; bringing different gifts to different people; a
good wind that blew nobody harm. But the actual effect on the senses, in
this cold marble corridor, is merely that the bewildered Christians have
got into a heathen temple of the winds. All this sort of criticism is
trite, but it is true.
The Resurrection of Rome CW21:340-1

(remember that the parallel is in the very first paragraph of
Manalive - so suggestive.

or perhaps this you might like better...

[with the coming of the fourth man to follow St. Francis] an invisible
line was crossed; for it must have been felt by this time that the
growth of that small group had become potentially infinite, or at least
that its outline had become permanently indefinite. It may have been in
the time of that transition that Francis had another of his dreams full
of voices; but now the voices were a clamour of the tongues of all
nations, Frenchmen and Italians and English and Spanish and Germans,
telling of the glory of God each in his own tongue; a new Pentecost and
a happier Babel.
St. Francis of Assisi CW2:91

Happy Birthday to Christianity!

Chesterton Set to Music

Nancy,

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

I've given more information at my web log.

Cheers, Craig "The Hebdomadal Chesterton" Burrell

Anonymous posted on April 28--please contact me!

On April 28th, an anonymous poster posted this tantalizing comment in the combox:

"I just wanted to let every Chesterton fan out there know that I am producing Chesterton's play "The Surprise" in my home town on North Wales, Pennsylvania! It has been a long road so far, and I'm not even CLOSE to finishing yet! Wish me luck! The performances are on June 7th @ 6:30pm and June 8th @ 3pm! Any and all prayers are welcome:)
signed, an aspiring Chestertonain!"

OK Anon, I've had two people who live near there wanting to come to your performance, so please let us know when/where it will be.

Dr. Thursday's Post

We are here in the Great Novena, the nine days of prayer to the Holy Spirit - and today we finish chapter III of Orthodoxy - our long journey through the foothills... What, you thought THOSE were mountains! Well, yes, this has been tiresome, and even GKC called it "the first and dullest business of this book - the rough review of recent thought." [CW1:246]

If you have been following along with our dull paragraph-plodding, reading one word after another, you will see, at the bottom of CW1:244, that GKC gives one more short analogy. It is worth study, not only because of the great "verbal fireworks" but because this holding up of a mirror is one of the best, and easiest Great Arguments to be used against so many wrong ideas being voiced today - the Argument of Symmetry, also called "practice what you preach", stated in wonderful mathematical precision in GKC's St. Thomas Aquinas:

"No sceptics work sceptically; no fatalists work fatalistically; all without exception work on the principle that it is possible to assume what it is not possible to believe. No materialist who thinks his mind was made up for him, by mud and blood and heredity, has any hesitation in making up his mind. No sceptic who believes that truth is subjective has any hesitation about treating it as objective. [CW2:542-3]

Exactly. But let us proceed.

Click to continue.

As usual, GKC picks a nicely debatable topic - the French Revolution. Those of us who were at the ACS conference in 2004 remember the hilarious debate about it between Mark Pilon (who said GKC was wrong) and Dale Ahlquist (who said "What?") Yes. Again, in true Thomistic fashion, GKC goes further toward truth, even with such a tense topic:

The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing, because the Jacobins willed something definite and limited. They desired the freedoms of democracy, but also all the vetoes of democracy. They wished to have votes and not to have titles. Republicanism had an ascetic side in Franklin or Robespierre as well as an expansive side in Danton or Wilkes. Therefore they have created something with a solid substance and shape, the square social equality and peasant wealth of France. But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn "revolutionise" from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. But the new rebel is a sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book (about the sex problem) in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

It may be added that the same blank and bankruptcy can be observed in all fierce and terrible types of literature, especially in satire. Satire may be mad and anarchic, but it presupposes an admitted superiority in certain things over others; it presupposes a standard. When little boys in the street laugh at the fatness of some distinguished journalist, [Who do you think GKC is talking about? Hee hee.] they are unconsciously assuming a standard of Greek sculpture. They are appealing to the marble Apollo. And the curious disappearance of satire from our literature is an instance of the fierce things fading for want of any principle to be fierce about. Nietzsche had some natural talent for sarcasm: he could sneer, though he could not laugh; but there is always something bodiless and without weight in his satire, simply because it has not any mass of common morality behind it. He is himself more preposterous than anything he denounces. But, indeed, Nietzsche will stand very well as the type of the whole of this failure of abstract violence. The softening of the brain which ultimately overtook him was not a physical accident. If Nietzsche had not ended in imbecility, Nietzscheism would end in imbecility. Thinking in isolation and with pride ends in being an idiot. Every man who will not have softening of the heart must at last have softening of the brain.

This last attempt to evade intellectualism ends in intellectualism, and therefore in death. The sortie has failed. The wild worship of lawlessness and the materialist worship of law end in the same void. Nietzsche scales staggering mountains, but he turns up ultimately in Tibet. He sits down beside Tolstoy in the land of nothing and Nirvana. They are both helpless - one because he must not grasp anything, and the other because he must not let go of anything. The Tolstoyan's will is frozen by a Buddhist instinct that all special actions are evil. But the Nietzscheite's will is quite equally frozen by his view that all special actions are good; for if all special actions are good, none of them are special. They stand at the cross-roads, and one hates all the roads and the other likes all the roads. The result is - well, some things are not hard to calculate. They stand at the cross-roads.
[CW1:244-6, my emphasis]

Now, you can read all about the nothing-end (or beginning) of science in the ancient orient in Fr. Jaki's Science and Creation - but here you see that the oriental view is just as futile for anything else: the sceptic and the fatalist, the rebel and the revolutionist annihilate their own tools... they are "undermining their own mines."

It is, to recur to the title of the chapter, The Suicide of Thought.

But, as I told you, we are standing on a ridge (on its downward slope, admittedly) where we can see something lovely - something we are approaching. GKC, the artist, here writes a line which smacks of Art - and reminds me, since I have used the analogy of a hike into our text, of the amazing Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) who was a physicist and historian - and a hiker and artist as well. During his vacations from teaching, he would hike into the Alps and draw wonderful pictures of the scenes - see Jaki's The Physicist As Artist for a sample of his amazing works. Ahem. The line I refer to is:

After this I begin to sketch a view of life which may not interest my reader, but which, at any rate, interests me.
[CW1:246]

That is, in the forthcoming pages, indeed, the remainder of the book. But, in true hiker fashion - I recall Gandalf's explanation ("looking backward") to Bilbo after his rescue from the trolls - GKC takes one last glance backward before he leaves this dark part of the trail:

In front of me, as I close this page, is a pile of modern books that I have been turning over for the purpose - a pile of ingenuity, a pile of futility. By the accident of my present detachment, I can see the inevitable smash of the philosophies of Schopenhauer and Tolstoy, Nietzsche and Shaw, as clearly as an inevitable railway smash could be seen from a balloon. They are all on the road to the emptiness of the asylum. For madness may be defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness; and they have nearly reached it. He who thinks he is made of glass, thinks to the destruction of thought; for glass cannot think. So he who wills to reject nothing, wills the destruction of will; for will is not only the choice of something, but the rejection of almost everything.
[CW1:246]

This may recall a famous analogy speaking to God's foreknowledge of our free will: we are sitting on a mountaintop (we cannot get away from these hiking views, can we?) and watch as two trains, one on each side of the mountain, proceed along a pair of tracks where the signals have failed. We can know with certainty that they shall collide (or not) depending on our knowledge of the switch settings, but it is not WE who cause the collision. Here, too, GKC does not cause the "smash" - no, but we see it even more clearly a century afterwards, on cable TV, on the INTERNET, and in so many other ways.

Alas, it is not as comforting as a mere railway "smash". These dark ones are attacking even greater, and even holier things. Note again how GKC's argument proceeds: using, not abusing, even the things of his enemies, and always proceeding to greater matters than mere rebuttals of their errors. Also, you may wonder (having heard that this book is supposedly about "Christianity") how the topic will arise. You will find the matter first introduced in this chapter's concluding paragraph:

And as I turn and tumble over the clever, wonderful, tiresome, and useless modern books, the title of one of them rivets my eye. It is called "Jeanne d'Arc," by Anatole France. I have only glanced at it, but a glance was enough to remind me of Renan's "Vie de Jesus." It has the same strange method of the reverent sceptic. It discredits supernatural stories that have some foundation, simply by telling natural stories that have no foundation. Because we cannot believe in what a saint did, we are to pretend that we know exactly what he felt. But I do not mention either book in order to criticise it, but because the accidental combination of the names called up two startling images of sanity which blasted all the books before me. Joan of Arc was not stuck at the cross-roads, either by rejecting all the paths like Tolstoy, or by accepting them all like Nietzsche. She chose a path, and went down it like a thunderbolt. Yet Joan, when I came to think of her, had in her all that was true either in Tolstoy or Nietzsche, all that was even tolerable in either of them. I thought of all that is noble in Tolstoy, the pleasure in plain things, especially in plain pity, the actualities of the earth, the reverence for the poor, the dignity of the bowed back. Joan of Arc had all that and with this great addition, that she endured poverty as well as admiring it; whereas Tolstoy is only a typical aristocrat trying to find out its secret. And then I thought of all that was brave and proud and pathetic in poor Nietzsche, and his mutiny against the emptiness and timidity of our time. I thought of his cry for the ecstatic equilibrium of danger, his hunger for the rush of great horses, his cry to arms. Well, Joan of Arc had all that, and again with this difference, that she did not praise fighting, but fought. We know that she was not afraid of an army, while Nietzsche, for all we know, was afraid of a cow. Tolstoy only praised the peasant; she was the peasant. Nietzsche only praised the warrior; she was the warrior. She beat them both at their own antagonistic ideals; she was more gentle than the one, more violent than the other. Yet she was a perfectly practical person who did something, while they are wild speculators who do nothing. It was impossible that the thought should not cross my mind that she and her faith had perhaps some secret of moral unity and utility that has been lost. And with that thought came a larger one, and the colossal figure of her Master had also crossed the theatre of my thoughts. The same modern difficulty which darkened the subject-matter of Anatole France also darkened that of Ernest Renan. Renan also divided his hero's pity from his hero's pugnacity. Renan even represented the righteous anger at Jerusalem as a mere nervous breakdown after the idyllic expectations of Galilee. As if there were any inconsistency between having a love for humanity and having a hatred for inhumanity! Altruists, with thin, weak voices, denounce Christ as an egoist. Egoists (with even thinner and weaker voices) denounce Him as an altruist. In our present atmosphere such cavils are comprehensible enough. The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. The hatred of a hero is more generous than the love of a philanthropist. There is a huge and heroic sanity of which moderns can only collect the fragments. There is a giant of whom we see only the lopped arms and legs walking about. They have torn the soul of Christ into silly strips, labelled egoism and altruism, and they are equally puzzled by His insane magnificence and His insane meekness. They have parted His garments among them, and for His vesture they have cast lots; [Jn 19:24, quoting Ps 21(22):19] though the coat was without seam woven from the top throughout.
[CW1:246-8, emphasis added]

Since that ends the chapter I ought not go further, especially since it has such a musically satisfying cadence.

But I must be true to my own art here, and provide you with a link or two for your future reference. You have heard me refer to Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth previously, and you shall hear it mentioned again - so, if you recall when Milo meets the smallest giant, the biggest midget, and the others, you may note the parallel here. Should that seem too elusive a link, or too confusing, do not worry - you will hear more - FAR more - about this in a later chapter. Here's a sample of GKC's description of this mysterious person:

Outrageously tall men might feel him to be short. Very short men might feel him to be tall. Old bucks who are growing stout might consider him insufficiently filled out; old beaux who were growing thin might feel that he expanded beyond the narrow lines of elegance. Perhaps Swedes (who have pale hair like tow) called him a dark man, while negroes considered him distinctly blonde.
[CW1:294-5]

Yes, a mystery. You may try to guess who that is, but I expect that you will find it a Surprise. I think it is also a mystery to consider that I write this today, Thursday in the Great Novena, and seven weeks ago this evening we heard GKC's concluding quote of the Psalms as the priest stripped the altar... those terrible and barren and naked words, some of the saddest and most empty words of the psalms...

And this might make us ask: What if God rebelled? What if God revolted?

So let us, for a brief pause, ponder that stripping, that emptying - for very soon we shall have our fill. [cf. Mt 5:6]

Come, O Holy Spirit!
Fill the hearts of Thy faithful
and enkindle in them
the FIRE of Thy love!

Thou on those who evermore
Thee confess and Thee adore
In Thy sevenfold gift descend.

--Dr. Thursday.

Chesterteens Recreate Famous Threesome Picture

Baring, Overbaring and Pastbaring.

See the original.

An Interview with Betty Aberlin

I recently had the privilege and fun of interviewing Betty Aberlin for Gilbert Magazine. She is a poet who has recently had her book published, which is kind of a big thing for a poet. On top of that, her name is linked with one of Chesterton's favorite writers: George MacDonald. George wrote the other half of Betty's book, so to speak.

This interview will be in a future issue of Gilbert Magazine (about two issues from now, based on how we work) so if you're interested in reading about this fascinating poet-who-is-also-a-famous-actress, please make sure your subscription is up-to-date or renewed.

A Student's Essay for the American Chesterton Society becomes a Great Article on FaithFUSION

The following was originally written by me as part of an essay contest for the American Chesterton Society and has been expanded for Faithfusion:

In today’s world a revolutionary is not one who espouses a new idea, but one who would dare to bring back an old one. The reason is that the new ideas are generally boring and mundane while old ones are fresh and exciting because they have been packed away for so long. In today’s world, a boorish man is generally accepted because it is new and respectable to be rude; being chivalrous, on the other hand, is decried as sexist and offensive because it is an old idea. Thus, those who call themselves “liberal” and embrace the new ideas tend to be the critics rather than the idealists. It was with something of this in mind that G. K. Chesterton wrote in Varied Types, “He is a very shallow critic who cannot see an eternal rebel in the heart of a conservative.”

Let's all go give him a comment of appreciation.

The Great Novena

Today begins the great novena (nine days of prayer) to the Holy Spirit. Some of us at Gilbert Magazine pray this every year for our magazine, so we get some good inspiration for our readers. Since you know we need all the help we can get ;-) please join us in prayer.

Special intentions: Gilbert writer's family members who are sick, burdened by unemployment or the knowledge of a layoff coming soon; a couple's adult son recently died tragically; another couple's 14 year old son died of a virus; a friend struggling to write a book; for unity amongst all Christians; and any other intentions you may add.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Errors, Rush-ian Orthodoxy and Giraffes (again)

Happy Ascension!

One of the greatest, and most important, things I learned in college - I mean the academic part, not the social part - was that one does not get to know more about computers through the gate of higher mathematics which is labelled "Calculus". The mathematics of computers is not to be found on the great branch of the Tree of Knowledge which is called "Continuous" - but on the other, far smaller, and much less well known to most students, called "Discrete" - the mathematics which deals with numbers - that is, whole numbers, integers (Latin integer = whole, entire) in the old-fashioned way, as separate (discrete) things, and not just another point on a line.

Anyway - when I had my very first course in computers, our first assignment was to type up a very short program - we used punch cards in that class, though there were also "terminals" which were quite comparable to what you are no doubt using to read this. We had to check very carefully that we had "punched" them correctly, and when we had finished, we "submitted" them to the computer... and maybe 20 minutes later we received our "printout" results.

The curious thing was this, as our professor told us: "If you did this assignment correctly, you will have an error. This is intentional, and part of your learning about this subject."

And this is borne out by the Great Lecture given to Milo by the Princesses Rhyme and Reason: "you sometimes learn more from doing the wrong thing for the right reason than doing the right thing for the wrong reason." (In The Phantom Tollbooth, the movie; I quote from memory.)

(An aside: sure it is better if we always do the right thing - even if it's for the wrong reason. But the point made by R&R is that it is possible to learn even from our errors, even if we live in a Castle in the Air!)

But I'd prefer to say that this is part of the mystery of Sin. God permits (actually, tolerates, one of the few accurate uses of that dull word) sin because He can bring greater good from it. Think Adam: "o felix culpa the priest sung 40 nights ago: "O happy (or better, fruitful) fault!"

Why do I bring this up? Because in the next few verses from Orthodoxy, our current textbook, we shall hear in very quick order, the names of several dark-minded Heretics - those who are in error. And yet, our guide Uncle Gilbert shall show us how to use them to get over this last rough "Nietzsche Ridge" and receive some wonderful gifts...
Click here when you're ready.

Before we resume, just remember where we are: nearing the end of the chapter called "The Suicide of Thought", examining the ways that modern thinkers strive to make others (and themselves) STOP thinking. GKC pauses, nearing this last rather rough but not very tall ridge, and considers our journey thus far:

At the beginning of this preliminary negative sketch I said that our mental ruin has been wrought by wild reason, not by wild imagination. A man does not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he may go mad by thinking it out in square inches. Now, one school of thinkers has seen this and jumped at it as a way of renewing the pagan health of the world. They see that reason destroys; but Will, they say, creates. The ultimate authority, they say, is in will, not in reason. The supreme point is not why a man demands a thing, but the fact that he does demand it.
[CW1:241]

The Will, hmmm. I mentioned The Phantom Tollbooth according to a plan, since I must now also mention the correlative text, The Neverending Story which (like so many fairy tales) emphasizes that most mysterious gift called The Will. (In an orc-tunnel beneath the Misty Mountains I hear someone murmuring "pity"...) For that is the error common to Nietzsche, Wells, Shaw, and some other authors. I shall not dig into this in detail - which is nearly what GKC writes too:

I have no space to trace or expound this philosophy of Will. It came, I suppose, through Nietzsche...
[CW1:241]

Now that I have stated this dark, sinister name, I can tell you why I began with my "error" in computing. I began this way to highlight the mystery of such a name - because in Deus Caritas Est the very first quote made by the Holy Father comes not from Aquinas, nor even from a saint - but from Nietzsche! He sounds very Chestertonian here, too:

According to Friedrich Nietzsche, Christianity had poisoned eros, which for its part, while not completely succumbing, gradually degenerated into vice.[1] Here the German philosopher was expressing a widely-held perception: doesn't the Church, with all her commandments and prohibitions, turn to bitterness the most precious thing in life?
[Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 3; note [1] states "Cf. Jenseits von Gut und Böse, IV, 168." This is quoted from the EWTN Library.]

Like my computer science professor, and the Princesses Rhyme and Reason, Benedict shows us that sometimes we need to see an error first in order to learn more about the truth. And remember, we are travelling through this very difficult territory with Uncle Gilbert to learn, as he did, the ways which are wrong - so that we shall know the Right Way.

GKC thinks that the error bean with Nietzsche, and goes on to its appearance in other Heretics:

But however it began, the view is common enough in current literature. The main defence of these thinkers is that they are not thinkers; they are makers. They say that choice is itself the divine thing. Thus Mr. Bernard Shaw has attacked the old idea that men's acts are to be judged by the standard of the desire of happiness. He says that a man does not act for his happiness, but from his will. He does not say, "Jam will make me happy," but "I want jam." And in all this others follow him with yet greater enthusiasm.
[CW1:241]

Ah, jam. (I had some grape jam at my feast-day breakfast this morning.) You might say I delight in quoting children's fantasies - I do, and even more because few others do, and at least I have a familiarity with them. (Didn't I tell you how I lectured from Alice in Wonderland when I taught computer science classes? I did. Ahem.) But I might just as well quote Chesterton's children's fantasies, as those of you will know who have read the treasure-trove called CW14. The scene is at breakfast, a number of people are sitting around the table. Our hero, Petersen, has just made a very grand insight which I cannot take the space to quote, and the room is silent for a moment.

Marjory was watching him keenly: she had just had a gleam of hope. His eyes were slowly filling with the pale blue fire she knew well: it was so he used to look when she read him a poem, or when the sunset grew red and gold over the wooded hill. At such moments he would say something which she couldn't understand.
At length the words came, with a kind of timid radiance.
"May I have jam?"
"Certainly," she said, raising her eyebrows wearily. He only smiled ravenously, but she felt sure that if any earthly chair had been high enough he would have kicked his legs. There was another silence.
"Some fellows like butter and jam," said the religious enthusiast of the morning's conversation. "I think that's beastly."
"The main benefit of existence," said Marjory bitterly, "seems to be eating."
"Hardly the main benefit surely," said Petersen calmly, "though I agree with you that it is a neglected branch of the poetry of daily life. The song of birds, the sight of stars, the scent of flowers, all these we admit are a divine revelation, why not the taste of jam?"
"Not very poetical to my fancy," said Marjory, scornfully.
"It is uncultivated," said Petersen, "but a time may come when it will be elaborated into an art as rich and varied as music or painting. People will say, 'There is an undercurrent of pathos in this gravy, despite its frivolity,' or 'Have you tasted that passionate rebellious pudding? Ethically I think it's dangerous.' After all, eating has a grander basis than the arts of the other senses, for it is absolutely necessary to existence: it is the bricks and mortar of the Temple of the Spirit."
And he took a large bite out of the bread and jam.
[CW14:786-7]

But now I am only doing what GKC did - he mentions John Davidson, H.G. Wells and another snippet from Shaw (apparently quoting Bentham) about this same thing - then gives the summary:

The real difference between the test of happiness and the test of will is simply that the test of happiness is a test and the other isn't. You can discuss whether a man's act in jumping over a cliff was directed towards happiness; you cannot discuss whether it was derived from will. Of course it was. You can praise an action by saying that it is calculated to bring pleasure or pain to discover truth or to save the soul. But you cannot praise an action because it shows will; for to say that is merely to say that it is an action. By this praise of will you cannot really choose one course as better than another. And yet choosing one course as better than another is the very definition of the will you are praising.
[CW1:242]

And as you have noticed, I also like to quote rock music. Here, we see an idea powerfully expressed by the Canadian group "Rush":

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice..."
["Free Will", Rush]

(Wow, I wonder if they ever read any GKC.) It is worth going further along this ridge - as you have seen if you have travelled with us so far, we acquire new and powerful tools at each stop. Here is today's gift, derived directly from those great Heretics GKC quotes. This is one of the most quick-moving, most verbally rich, most fireworky, but also most deep and useful passages we have seen - perhaps because from here we can see a grand view of the territory we shall shortly be travelling. This bit might be called the "Pleiades" - the Seven Sisters - of Orthodoxy, for from it we receive (as if at Pentecost) a sevenfold gift! What a remarkable place we are now at! Read it carefully:

...they [these Heretics] always talk of will as something that expands and breaks out. But it is quite the opposite.

(1) Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation.

(2) In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else.

That objection, which men of this school used to make to the act of marriage, is really an objection to every act.

(3) Every act is an irrevocable selection and exclusion.

Just as when you marry one woman you give up all the others, so when you take one course of action you give up all the other courses. If you become King of England, you give up the post of Beadle in Brompton. If you go to Rome, you sacrifice a rich suggestive life in Wimbledon. It is the existence of this negative or limiting side of will that makes most of the talk of the anarchic will-worshippers little better than nonsense. For instance, Mr. John Davidson tells us to have nothing to do with "Thou shalt not"; but it is surely obvious that "Thou shalt not" is only one of the necessary corollaries of "I will." "I will go to the Lord Mayor's Show, and thou shalt not stop me." Anarchism adjures us to be bold creative artists, and care for no laws or limits.

(4) But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits.

(5) Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame.

If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe.

(6) The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits.

You can free things from alien or accidental laws, but not from the laws of their own nature. You may, if you like, free a tiger from his bars; but do not free him from his stripes. Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump: you may be freeing him from being a camel. Do not go about as a demagogue, encouraging triangles to break out of the prison of their three sides. If a triangle breaks out of its three sides, its life comes to a lamentable end. Somebody wrote a work called "The Loves of the Triangles"; I never read it, but I am sure that if triangles ever were loved, they were loved for being triangular. This is certainly the case with all artistic creation, which is in some ways the most decisive example of pure will.

(7) The artist loves his limitations: they constitute the thing he is doing. The painter is glad that the canvas is flat. The sculptor is glad that the clay is colourless.
[CW1:243-4]

Yes, the line-breaks and numbering are mine. You may see from number (2) why I speculated whether "Rush" had read GKC. You will also recall that I promised we should see our friendly giraffe again, and here he is! And if you are interested in the "larger" map of GKC's works, you may wish to add a cross-reference to his fiction: Gabriel Gale asks:

"Were you ever an isosceles triangle?"
"Very seldom," replied Garth with restraint. "May I ask what the devil you are talking about?"
"Only something I was thinking about," answered the poet, lifting himself on to one elbow. "I wondered whether it would be a cramping sort of thing to be surrounded by straight lines, and whether being in a circle would be any better."
["The Yellow Bird" in The Poet and the Lunatics]

The last three of the seven, which speak of art and limit, (and of science, as readers of Fr. Jaki already know, and as we shall shortly learn from GKC) are found in many other places in GKC's writing; the idea constitutes what I call a "motif" within his writing: like a musical theme, the idea appears in many other forms and places, and I would fill in another posting or two to quote them - perhaps someday we'll explore them. But for now we must hurry along our present course. Yes - as we begin the Great Novena tomorrow in our preparation for Pentecost, let us think on all this richness - remembering that with great gifts comes great responsibilities. And pray for each other as we proceed with our journey...

--Dr. Thursday