Dr. Thursday's Post

The Amps of "Spinal Tap" May Go Up to Eleven, but Ours Go Up to Twelve

I have just completed a book which combines humor, books, work, a shipwreck, magic, crime, music, cloistered Carmelites, cable TV, Latin, computers, secret passages, food, boredom, beer, Mass, death, and a few other things of interest to Chestertonians. Joe, its main character, likes rock-and-roll, and hopes one day to buy an electric guitar. Yes, like Joe, I also like rock and roll - at least some songs, and some bands. (My instrument, however is the bass.)

Certain people may find this musical taste just as sinful as liking stories about magic, or about murder (some of which I also like.) Obviously, there are times and places for all things, including loud music, whether it be the 1812 Overture or - uh - you choose the band. But whenever the topic of loud music comes up, Chestertonians should recall these famous words:

I remember a debate in which I had praised militant music in ritual, and some one asked me if I could imagine Christ walking down the street before a brass band. I said I could imagine it with the greatest ease; for Christ definitely approved a natural noisiness at a great moment. When the street children shouted too loud, certain priggish disciples did begin to rebuke them in the name of good taste. He said: "If these were silent the very stones would cry out." [Luke 19:40] With these words He called up all the wealth of artistic creation that has been founded on this creed.
["The Tower" in Tremendous Trifles]

OK, He didn't say the very rocks would cry out, but still... (hm, feels like a St. Peter joke in there somewhere...) No, I am not going to get into the various issues of rock today. I mean rock music. Yes, there are lyrics of some songs which come right out of hell. But on the contrary (hee hee) there are others, even from hard rock songs, which might pass for something from Aquinas.

So. If Pope Benedict XVI can quote Nietzsche in his first encyclical [Deus Caritas Est 3, note 1], and Aquinas can quote the gods-and-goddesses-worshipping, slave-approving, milky-way-from-swamp-dreaming Aristotle [e.g. Summa I Q5A2 and many other places], and St. Paul can quote pagan poets [Acts 17:28] we too can quote rock lyrics when they assist us in understanding Chesterton, which is to say in understanding reality: God, the Universe, ourselves.

The paradox we shall encounter today, however, is the reverse: when rock musicians quote Chesterton.

The hero of the story I mentioned earlier grew up in a small town on the Atlantic shore, and though he works in cable TV, he still thinks of himself as a "beach boy" - which is also the name of a famous surfer rock band from California. Today we shall learn that they happen to have written a song which quotes GKC's Orthodoxy - one of the greatest and most powerful and mystical quotes of the entire book, and one which happens to unite God, the Universe and ourselves...

Click here to find out more.
We are, as you may recall, fairly far into the chapter of Orthodoxy called "The Ethics of Elfland" and we have seen some very strange things. We have learned that we are living in a marvellous, magical world. (If that second "M" word bothers you, let us say "unexpected") and the marvel gives rise to two important things: a sense of gratitude, and the very important thing GKC calls "the Doctrine of Conditional Joy": the idea that we are given this marvel on certain strange conditions. Now, as we are starting to come toward the conclusion of the chapter, GKC provides a kind of review, stunning in its implied recommendation:

Well, I left the fairy tales lying on the floor of the nursery, and I have not found any books so sensible since. I left the nurse guardian of tradition and democracy, and I have not found any modern type so sanely radical or so sanely conservative. But the matter for important comment was here: that when I first went out into the mental atmosphere of the modern world, I found that the modern world was positively opposed on two points to my nurse and to the nursery tales. It has taken me a long time to find out that the modern world is wrong and my nurse was right. The really curious thing was this: that modern thought contradicted this basic creed of my boyhood on its two most essential doctrines. I have explained that the fairy tales founded in me two convictions; first, that this world is a wild and startling place, which might have been quite different, but which is quite delightful; second, that before this wildness and delight one may well be modest and submit to the queerest limitations of so queer a kindness. But I found the whole modern world running like a high tide against both my tendernesses; and the shock of that collision created two sudden and spontaneous sentiments, which I have had ever since and which, crude as they were, have since hardened into convictions.

First, I found the whole modern world talking scientific fatalism; saying that everything is as it must always have been, being unfolded without fault from the beginning. The leaf on the tree is green because it could never have been anything else. Now, the fairy-tale philosopher is glad that the leaf is green precisely because it might have been scarlet. He feels as if it had turned green an instant before he looked at it. He is pleased that snow is white on the strictly reasonable ground that it might have been black. Every colour has in it a bold quality as of choice; the red of garden roses is not only decisive but dramatic, like suddenly spilt blood. He feels that something has been done. But the great determinists of the nineteenth century were strongly against this native feeling that something had happened an instant before. In fact, according to them, nothing ever really had happened since the beginning of the world. Nothing ever had happened since existence had happened; and even about the date of that they were not very sure.
[CW1:261-2]

Ah... it is like something DONE. I had a resonance in my mind as I read this, and it took some work to find out what, as I do not know French. Some time ago, a friend (who does know French) was speaking about a matter of philosophy, and used the term donné meaning something given (that is, a starting point of discussion, or a matter not presently under debate, something taken for granted). But this is quite apt: the green grass is a donné, something given - it is something DONE. It was chosen to be that way, and so it is. We cannot debate it, even if we might be color blind or have our eyes closed, or be out at night... it is that way and no other. Green grass is so poetic (which means something MADE; see GKC's Chaucer CW18:155.) But we are not being poets here; we are simply observing. Someone else already was a poet, when He made the grass, or we could not even be its critics. (Some joke ought to read: if a critic doesn't read any books, or watch any movies, what does he write about? This strongly hints at the contingent ontology of evil, but we cannot go into that now.)

Here, my own discipline compels me to mention, we find the great and glorious mark of Doctor Chesterton, the true scientist: he approaches Reality in humility. He does not "expect" the leaf to be green, for it might have been something else. He takes the leaf as something "done" - which reveals his true understanding of experiment, which comes from the same root as "experience", and for a very good reason: an experiment is performed so that we might experience what occurs. We seem to think "experiment" means "test". It doesn't. It means "live through it, experience it, witness it". Which is why some branches of science, like astronomy, weather, archaeology and geology, have such a hard time with experiments: you cannot RE-experience what has already happened. All you can do is look at what's left over. Ahem. But that's going too deep into that very interesting side trail called "epistemology of the sciences" and we cannot go there either; we're not equipped for such strenuous work. (Whew.)

But, as GKC emphasizes, and I repeated, these things - like green leaves and so on - have this feeling of something that has been done. Someone good waved a wand, made a choice, and made it to be SO. Sure, it might have been done differently! That's the nature of a choice. Here's the moment for that delicious quote from the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But God did decide. He chose the green leaf and it was so. He saw it, and it was good. [See Genesis chapter 1.]

Are you feeling a strong wind, buffeting us here on the trail? Yes, we are rather shocked to discover that we happen to stand on a very high point indeed, and some of you may be horrified. We are seeing that somehow we are getting at the supreme matter of the Divine Will here. Yes, oh, my, yes. But isn't that what we are supposed to do: "Jesus saith to them: My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work." [Jn 4:34 emphasis added; cf Mt 12:50; see also Mt 26:39]

Divine will? How can this be science? I mean Physics and stuff like that! Are we not confusing the disciplines? Shall we not be criticised by the great student-of-study, Cardinal Newman:

If they certainly would resist the divine who determined the orbit of Jupiter by the Pentateuch, why am I to be accused of cowardice or illiberality, because I will not tolerate their attempt in turn to theologize by means of astronomy? And if experimentalists would be sure to cry out, did I attempt to install the Thomist philosophy in the schools of astronomy and medicine, why may not I, when Divine Science is ostracized, and La Place, or Buffon, or Humboldt, sits down in its chair, why may not I fairly protest against their exclusiveness, and demand the emancipation of Theology?
[Newman, The Idea of a University IV, 14]

No, we are not doing that. We are in elfland, and we are observing its wonders, in awe of the wizard Who put them here. Haven't you heard that song, which seems to be quoted sometimes at Mass:

If ever, o ever, a wiz there was, the Wizard of Oz is one because...
Because of the wonderful things he does.

Confer:

All Your actions show Your wisdom and love. [Eucharistic Prayer IV]

Yes. Well? Don't you wonder how it happens? GKC tells us. It's not what you expect. And the funny thing is, these next two paragraphs give us the true foundation - no, even better, the license - to practice "science" (meaning physics, chemistry, and so on) - even while they speak so gloriously about will, and about God and His free choices of His creation.

A warning before you proceed. In previous postings I warned you to finish your drink or snack, before making you laugh. And there is a bit of animal humour coming, so you ought to finish it anyway. But this time, my warning is more profound. You may possibly feel the urge to genuflect. This is one of the Great Heights of this book, and perhaps one of the most important insights of the last century. If you read it with humility, you will be moved. Then please read it again, and take it to your lab, or your workplace, or your classroom, or your home, and act upon it. It may seem too technical at first, or even third reading, but it will surely seep in, once you do it again...

The modern world as I found it was solid for modern Calvinism, for the necessity of things being as they are. But when I came to ask them I found they had really no proof of this unavoidable repetition in things except the fact that the things were repeated. Now, the mere repetition made the things to me rather more weird than more rational. It was as if, having seen a curiously shaped nose in the street and dismissed it as an accident, I had then seen six other noses of the same astonishing shape. I should have fancied for a moment that it must be some local secret society. So one elephant having a trunk was odd; but all elephants having trunks looked like a plot. I speak here only of an emotion, and of an emotion at once stubborn and subtle. But the repetition in Nature seemed sometimes to be an excited repetition, like that of an angry schoolmaster saying the same thing over and over again. The grass seemed signalling to me with all its fingers at once; the crowded stars seemed bent upon being understood. The sun would make me see him if he rose a thousand times. The recurrences of the universe rose to the maddening rhythm of an incantation, and I began to see an idea.

All the towering materialism which dominates the modern mind rests ultimately upon one assumption; a false assumption. It is supposed that if a thing goes on repeating itself it is probably dead; a piece of clockwork. People feel that if the universe was personal it would vary; if the sun were alive it would dance. This is a fallacy even in relation to known fact. For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore. Heaven may encore the bird who laid an egg. If the human being conceives and brings forth a human child instead of bringing forth a fish, or a bat, or a griffin, the reason may not be that we are fixed in an animal fate without life or purpose. It may be that our little tragedy has touched the gods, that they admire it from their starry galleries, and that at the end of every human drama man is called again and again before the curtain. Repetition may go on for millions of years, by mere choice, and at any instant it may stop. Man may stand on the earth generation after generation, and yet each birth be his positively last appearance.
[CW1:261-264]

Before we proceed, a few notes to assist:

* Islington: a borough of London. GKC uses it in a number of places as a general-purpose town. (See below for a sample.)
* Thames/Sheerness: The Thames is the river of London. Sheerness is a town on the mouth of the Thames. (American translation: "as regularly as the Mississippi goes to New Orleans".)
* encore: a French interjection, meaning "again!" or "once more!"
* "signalling with all its fingers": yes, you get five points if you recalled the Professor de Worms' code from The Man Who Was Thursday.
* "if the sun were alive it would dance": this was some nine years before Fatima where the sun danced. See Jaki's God and the Sun at Fatima for a very interesting study of that event.
* "incantation": You wonder why this is elfland? But do not forget the root of "incantation" is the Latin word for "song". No wonder Sam Gamgee, in awe of the singing of the Elves of Rivendell (or was it Lorien?), talked about being "inside a song"; that's almost a literal translation of the word.

Now... (Ahem!) Speaking of songs...

Yes, "Do It Again" is the title of a song by the Beach Boys. And yes, "Do It Again" is also the Official Cheer of all sports teams at Chesterton University. (It was selected by one of our Favorite Chestertonians at a Conference some years ago.) Actually there's just the one, the Gype team. They're undefeated since no other school has one. If you don't know about Gype, you need to read GKC's Autobiography (see CW16:211-2).

An aside: It might be argued, by the critics who have nothing better to do, and certainly nothing creative to make, that this argument of lively repetition is rebutted by GKC himself in the story called "A Somewhat Improbable Story" in CW14:91 et seq about how Bumpton Street goes to heaven for justice against a dull man. But that is an error caused by a failure to read the story carefully. The story is actually the usual instance of an idea of GKC's non-fiction appearing in GKC's fiction. Another, simpler counter-example to these critics is provided by the threefold repetition (which is, of course, not a repetition at all) of what we might call "Magic By Iteration". Here is one:

There is a truth in talking of the variety of Nature; but I think that Nature often shows her chief strangeness in her sameness. There is a weird rhythm in this very repetition; it is as if the earth were resolved to repeat a single shape until the shape shall turn terrible. Have you ever tried the experiment of saying some plain word, such as "dog," thirty times? By the thirtieth time it has become a word like "snark" or "pobble." It does not become tame, it becomes wild, by repetition.
[GKC, "The Telegraph Poles" in Alarms and Discursions]

Another aside: Father Jaki has done important work on Islam and its view of the Divine Will, noting its historical underpinnings and showing how its theology makes modern science impossible, because of its emphasis on the freedom of the divine will. [See e.g. chapter 9 in Science and Creation or his booklet called Jesus, Islam, Science] As GKC shows in his Heretics a heresy is an exaggeration of a truth, to the neglect of even related truths. Here, this single paragraph of GKC spells the fullness of defeat for such a heretical view of God, for if God's will is free, He is also free to repeat Himself, even vast numbers of times, even always. When one day a new Summa is written, it will surely cite Chesterton on this matter.

There is much more to say about all this, but it will have to be said another day, when God says "Do it again" to the sun. Crank up the amps, for He approves natural noisiness at a great moment, and surely this is one. Yeah!

--Dr. Thursday

P.S. Here is the promised sample about Islington. I think you will find it very instructive.

The Bible tells us to love our neighbours, [See Mt 22:39 quoting Lev 19:18] and also to love our enemies; [See Mt 5:44] probably because they are generally the same people. And there is a real human reason for this. You think of a remote man merely as a man; that is, you think of him in the right way. Suppose I say to you suddenly - "Oblige me by brooding on the soul of the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington." Perhaps (now I come to think of it) you are the man who lives at 351, High Street, Islington; for this journal has a wide circulation. In that case substitute some other unknown address and pursue the intellectual sport. Now you will probably be broadly right about the man in Islington whom you have never seen or heard of, because you will begin at the right end - the human end. The man in Islington is at least a man. The soul of the man in Islington is certainly a soul. He also has been bewildered and broadened by youth; he also has been tortured and intoxicated by love; he also is sublimely doubtful about death. You can think about the soul of that nameless man who is a mere number in Islington High Street. But you do not think about the soul of your next-door neighbour. He is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a pianola; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours. Now, all these are the wrong ends of a man; and a man, like many other things in this world, such as a cat-o'-nine-tails, has a large number of wrong ends, and only one right one.
[ILN July 16 1910 CW28:563-4]
My goodness what a great post. Read it, and be amazed.
P.S. Your blogmistress has read Dr. Thursday novel, mentioned above, and thinks it Wonderful. Dr. Thursday needs some encouragement from the peanut gallery here to go for publication, which IMHO this novel needs. What do you think?

Ballade Contest in want of entries

The American Chesterton Society's own Sheila of Triolet contest fame is running a new Ballade contest, go check it out here and enter your best ballade!

More Responses to the New Yorker (and I don't mean the Obama cover)

The American Chesterton Society's own William Oddie (speaker at the 2008 conference) was quoted in this unfavorable account of the New Yorker article by the British Catholic Herald as a counter to the 9/10ths of the article which repeats the same anti-Semite accusations. (H/T Ellen F.)

And Rod Dreher pipes in.

And I still take umbridge and will be commenting again soon. As soon as I finish reading the terribly long article of which I am only half way through due to a lack of interest on my part in reading the rest of the diatribe against the man I love and refuse to see that I myself cause disinterest in--Chesterton.

American Chesterton Society Conference CDs are HERE!!!!!

Order yours NOW! Today! and Thanks! and Mark your calendars for Seattle in 2009! August 6-8th--be there!

20somethings: What is Manhood?

Joey G. reviews a fairly new book, called Gut Check by Tarek Saab.

I hadn't heard of him, but apparently he was a contestant on the reality TV show The Apprentice, with Donald Trump. He's using the fame that it generated to speak out about how he's flourished as a Catholic man in Corporate America. The book is loaded with Distributist type wisdom, and no less than half a dozen quotes from GKC.

I've posted a full review over at my new blog. JoeyG

Thanks, Joey.

Dr. Thursday's Post

The Well-Known Secret of Six
(but with a different vowel)

Today we face a very interesting topic, though it arises from only a single paragraph of Orthodoxy. It is, as you shall see when you read that paragraph, a fairly powerful word. It is, as GKC points out in the very important ILN essay for August 10, 1907 (also reprinted in All Things Considered), one of the three great secrets of all humanity. Assuming you were properly equipped when you started this little lit'ry outing, you should have in your packs a small laminated card with these three points listed upon it. You might take it out and refresh your memory:

1. Detective Story Secrets. The first is ... that of hide-and-seek, or the police novel, in which it permits privacy only in order to explode and smash privacy. The author makes first a fastidious secret of how the Bishop was murdered, only in order that he may at last declare, as from a high tower, to the whole democracy the great glad news that he was murdered by the governess. ... for its whole ultimate object is not to keep the secret, but to tell it.
2. [Today's Topic] There is a far more important class of things which humanity does agree to hide. They are so important that they cannot possibly be discussed here. But everyone will know the kind of things I mean. Upon ... such matters we are in a human freemasonry; the freemasonry is disciplined, but the freemasonry is free. We are asked to be silent about these things, but we are not asked to be ignorant about them. On the contrary, the fundamental human argument is entirely the other way. It is the thing most common to humanity that is most veiled by humanity. It is exactly because we all know that it is there that we need not say that it is there.
3. There is also a class of things on which the best civilisation does permit privacy, does resent all inquiry or explanation. This is in the case of things which need not be explained, because they cannot be explained, things too airy, instinctive, or intangible - caprices, sudden impulses, and the more innocent kind of prejudice.
[ILN Aug 10 1907 C27W524-5]

I have of course omitted the key word from point two; you can read it on your own cards. (If you have lost yours you ought to be able to think what it is rather easily. In any case you will learn it very shortly.

I have been a bit mysterious because this paragraph, and that very powerful topic, are mysterious. There will probably be some consternation about this matter; I cannot help it. All I can do is guide, and sometimes assist; it is not my path, but GKC's.

You might recall: we have been high up in the Elfland of our world, pondering the joint ideas of gratitude and of "The Doctrine of Conditional Joy". We are about to encounter a very short, but very interesting study of this - uh - certain secret. A secret known to everyone (at least over a certain age, I might add) and a wonderful, terrible, mysterious secret - one entirely bound up with this idea of "conditional joy".

Click here to proceed.

You may recall that last time I told you how even the most liberal of left-wing writers are incredibly conservative and tradition-bound - whenever they touch pen to paper, or finger to keyboard, and strive to bring their thoughts into one of the human languages known to others.

Yes, then even anarchists who disdain law, even rebels who hate all such things, bind themselves to powerful and utterly arbitrary rules, set long ago by people who most likely had no idea what they were doing. But unless they, like you and I, so bind themselves, they shall by no means have any possibility of communicating to others! Yes, for they cannot rebel against the alphabet.

If you do not believe me: you could find no stronger prohibition in any religion than those which are propounded to us by technology. No, they are far stronger, and much more intransigent. Without power you cannot boot your computer. Without a connection to a network you cannot do any - er - of the network things (I mean like e-mail or web pages). And without the magic password you cannot (for example) post on a blogg or even "log on" to a system. You cannot "choose" another way; there is no other way. You are bound to the alphabet called ASCII and its mysteries - which represent 01000001 as "A" and 01100001 as "a" and so forth! If your password wants a small "a" you cannot get away with a capital "A", no matter how much of a rebel you are. Indeed, even if you do not understand this code, even if you reject this code, unless you downshift and become like lower-case characters, you shall by no means enter the domain of the system...

There is another alphabet, written into nearly every cell of each human being. It is written in two letters, or rather a pair of letters: XX or XY. (I say nearly every, because the erythrocytes, or red blood cells are celibate. They have no nucleus, no chromosomes, no DNA. See here for more.) We are bound to that alphabet as well. Now, perhaps you will grasp what that secret is all about, and if not, you will find it clearly stated in GKC's next paragraph from Orthodoxy:

For this reason (we may call it the fairy godmother philosophy) I never could join the young men of my time in feeling what they called the general sentiment of revolt. I should have resisted, let us hope, any rules that were evil, and with these and their definition I shall deal in another chapter. But I did not feel disposed to resist any rule merely because it was mysterious. Estates are sometimes held by foolish forms, the breaking of a stick or the payment of a peppercorn: I was willing to hold the huge estate of earth and heaven by any such feudal fantasy. It could not well be wilder than the fact that I was allowed to hold it at all. At this stage I give only one ethical instance to show my meaning. I could never mix in the common murmur of that rising generation against monogamy, because no restriction on sex seemed so odd and unexpected as sex itself. To be allowed, like Endymion, to make love to the moon and then to complain that Jupiter kept his own moons in a harem seemed to me (bred on fairy tales like Endymion's) a vulgar anti-climax. Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman. To complain that I could only be married once was like complaining that I had only been born once. It was incommensurate with the terrible excitement of which one was talking. It showed, not an exaggerated sensibility to sex, but a curious insensibility to it. A man is a fool who complains that he cannot enter Eden by five gates at once. Polygamy is a lack of the realization of sex; it is like a man plucking five pears in mere absence of mind. The aesthetes touched the last insane limits of language in their eulogy on lovely things. The thistledown made them weep; a burnished beetle brought them to their knees. Yet their emotion never impressed me for an instant, for this reason, that it never occurred to them to pay for their pleasure in any sort of symbolic sacrifice. Men (I felt) might fast forty days for the sake of hearing a blackbird sing. Men might go through fire to find a cowslip. Yet these lovers of beauty could not even keep sober for the blackbird. They would not go through common Christian marriage by way of recompense to the cowslip. Surely one might pay for extraordinary joy in ordinary morals. Oscar Wilde said that sunsets were not valued because we could not pay for sunsets. But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.
[CW1:260-1]

--Dr. Thursday

Dr. Thursday's Post: The Sacramentality of Things

Books, Ancient and Modern

They call it "electronics" this gold boom,
The word for amber from the Greeks we get;
And keyboards now weave books upon its loom.
To Manisa of Turkey is our debt
For now their "northbound stone" is our diskette
Whereon a million letters spin and whir;
No dog-eared floppies you have seen, I bet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

Though books on disk make certain searches zoom,
They may succeed too well, to your regret,
A tenth of each book with ten words does bloom,
And paraphrase remains a constant threat,
And 'modern' scanned as 'modem' makes one fret,
This soup of letters I would rather stir
And eat - with a detective novelette.
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

No glowing AMBER words lift sleepless gloom,
Though saving scholars loads of time and sweat,
No CRTs are thrown across the room
When readers' expectations are not met,
Or leather-bound, with gold and jewels set
When with the written word one does concur.
The magnet serves, but print is foe or pet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

Oh fly caught in the web, trapped in the net,
Just scan a page which line noise cannot blur,
That touch and smell beyond all hardware yet...
Dale says it's tactile books that most prefer.

--Dr. Thursday

Previously published in Something Good To Read; used with
permission from the Editor-in-Chief.

When it appeared, the following note was appended:

We know that Manisa is the new name for Magnesia, the place in Asia
Minor which gives its name to magnets. But who is "Dale"? While we know
a lot of people named Dale, none of them live in Asia Minor. Perhaps it
is one of those poetry things we don't understand. That's why we have a
staff poet. Eds.

Note from Nancy: I don't know why, but when I just read this, I got the image of St. Jerome throwing a laptop across the room...

National Review: Chesterton’s Marvelous Year

National Review's current issue (July 14, 2008) contains this gem: "Chesterton’s Marvelous Year" by M. D. Aeschliman, who revisits The Man Who Was Thursday and more.

It is just a hundred years ago that one of the noblest and wittiest thinkers ever to write in our language, G. K. Chesterton, burst upon the scene with two masterworks. He is impossible to categorize in our specialized subject-area pigeonholes: He wrote vast amounts across a wide horizon, and must ultimately be categorized simply as a writer. In 1908 Chesterton published, among other things, two of the great works of modern literature, his novel The Man Who Was Thursday and his apologetic credo Orthodoxy. His essays and incidental journalism were also represented in a collection that same year, titled All Things Considered.

Although much shorter than the New Yorker article, this one at least praises Chesterton for who he really was.

H/T: Bob C.

Sir John Templeton dies

May he rest in peace.

Three degrees of separation: Templeton created the Templeton prize, which Fr. Stanley Jaki won, who is a Chestertonian scientist.

GKC on a Kindle: First Report

This is the first I've seen that someone has GKC on his Kindle. A paradoxical combination!

Something from G.K.'s Weekly

From the Combox came a request for this quote, which I thought more people would like to read, since it's so "right on!"

I checked the original essay in GK's Weekly, April 25, 1925. This seems to be what you are looking for:

About all those arguments affecting human equality, I myself always have one
feeling; which finds expression in a little test of my own. I shall begin to
take seriously those classifications of superiority and inferiority, when I
find a man classifying himself as inferior. It will be noted that Mr. Ford
does not say that he is only fitted to mind machines; he confesses frankly
that he is too fine and free and fastidious a being for such tasks. I shall
believe the doctrine when I hear somebody say: " I have only got the wits to
turn a wheel." That would be real, that would be realistic, that would be
scientific. That would be independent testimony that could not easily be
disputed. It is exactly the same, of course, with all the other
superiorities and denials of human equality, that are so specially
characteristic of a scientific age. It is so with the men who talk about
superior and inferior races; I never heard a man say:" Anthropology shows
that I belong to an inferior race." If he did, he might be talking like an
anthropologist; as it is, he is talking like a man, and not infrequently
like a fool. I have long hoped that I might some day hear a man explaining
on scientific principles his own unfitness for any important post or
privilege, say: " The world should belong to the free and fighting races,
and not to persons of that servile disposition that you will notice in
myself; the intelligent will know how to form opinions, but the weakness of
intellect from which I so obviously suffer renders my opinion manifestly
absurd on the face of them: there are indeed stately and god-like races- but
look at me! Observe my shapeless and fourth-rate features! Gaze, if you can
bear it, on my commonplace and repulsive face! "If I heard a man making a
scientific demonstration in that style, I might admit that he was really
scientific. But as it invariably happens, by a curious coincidence, that the
superior race is his own race, the superior type is his own type, and the
superior preference for work the sort of work he happens to prefer.

The New Yorker article

Our esteemed President and #1 Chestertonian, Dale Ahlquist, has responded to the New Yorker, and this will hopefully be published in the next issue of the same magazine. I am priviledged to read his response, and will give you a hint at it:

For those of us who love Chesterton, we are always distressed to see him subjected to any vile charge. But we’ve gotten a little tired of the charge of anti-Semitism...Mr. Gopnik has added a new technique to making the charge stick – declaring that Chesterton’s admirers should not defend Chesterton against the horrible accusation. Hm. That is certainly one way to end the debate. I would meekly suggest that a better way would be for people to stop repeating charges that have already been dropped.

There's more, much more, and as always, well written. Let's hope the New Yorker finds this fit to print, and will carry it in the next issue.

Chesterton on American Independence

Collected Works Volume 21: What I Saw in America; The Resurrection of Rome; Sidelights

I have never managed to lose my old conviction that travel narrows the mind. At least a man must make a double effort of moral humility and imaginative energy to prevent it from narrowing his mind. Indeed there is something touching and even tragic about the thought of the thoughtless tourist, who might have stayed at home loving Laplanders, embracing Chinamen, and clasping Patagonians to his heart in Hampstead or Surbiton, but for his blind and suicidal impulse to go and see what they looked like. This is not meant for nonsense; still less is it meant for the silliest sort of nonsense, which is cynicism. The human bond that he feels at home is not an illusion. On the contrary, it is rather an inner reality. Man is inside all men. In a real sense any man may be inside any men. But to travel is to leave the inside and draw dangerously near the outside. So long as he thought of men in the abstract, like naked toiling figures in some classic frieze, merely as those who labour and love their children and die, he was thinking the fundamental truth about them. By going to look at their unfamiliar manners and customs he is inviting them to disguise themselves in fantastic masks and costumes. Many modern internationalists talk as if men of different nationalities had only to meet and mix and understand each other. In reality that is the moment of supreme danger - the moment when they meet. We might shiver, as at the old euphemism by which a meeting meant a duel.

How can one not love a man who starts by turning the old "travel broadens the mind" phrase on its head, and ends with a duel?

This weekend, I invite you to sit back, relax, enjoy your freedom and independence, watch the fireworks, and read Chesterton. The perfect choice, shown above as a teaser, is What I Saw in America available in Collected Works 21. Happy 4th of July!

Dr. Thursday's Post: Glass

The Glory of Glass

As mentioned last time, I have lots of books nearby which help me do things. I thank God for my parents and teachers who taught me to read, and for the bounty God arranged for me to earn which has permitted me to buy and keep these wonderful treasures. Have you remembered to thank those responsible for your gifts?

One of them is somewhat dated two-volume set called Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, which I was reading in preparation for a large-scale poetry project. other things have gotten in the way, and I don't know when I will be able to get to... You want to know why a computer scientist is writing poems about elements? Perhaps you've forgotten this blogg is a CHESTERTONIAN blogg? There's no such thing as a different subject. [GKC, ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126] Remember, and write it in your notebook: "There is no such thing as an irrelevant thing in the universe; for all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Anyway, in this book from the 1950s I found the answer to that poor Vulcan's speculation - and so many others - on the idea of silicon-based life. People love to imagine that because silicon is so much like carbon, with its four bonds, there could be silicon-based life... maybe somewhere in the universe.

These people are not chemists; they don't know how the four bonds of silicon are different from the four bonds of carbon:

The idea that silicon has an organic chemistry of its own, rivalling that of carbon, is now realized to be untrue, owing to the instability of the Si-Si and Si-H links.
[Sidgwick, Chemical Elements and Their Compounds, I 555]

Sorry, it's not happening. However! I have chosen to begin today's journey into Orthodoxy with this bit from chemistry, not to abase silicon, but to exalt it. It is no insult to this wonderful and plentiful element to speak of its limitations - for we remember (all together): "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Very good. (Are you starting to have some clue as to why I wanted to write poems about the elements? I thought so. Hee hee.)

And the glory of silicon - well, not of silicon itself, which is a rather odd substance, and rarely found outside the laboratory. (People persist in saying "silicone" which is something else, almost a kind of rubber - it is a polymer of the form -SiR₂O- where R is a group such as methyl.) The silicon in an integrated circuit (the "chip" of modern electronics) has been treated with a variety of "doping" agents (things which change how it conducts electricity) and then etched into a fantastic multi-layered mosaic...They are one of the genuine marvels of our day, and an extreme form of grand cooperation among very different fields of study. Again, all very interesting and worth spending time on, but not today.

No, as I started to say, the glory of silicon is in one very famous, and very ancient, compound - one in which silicon is combined with two atoms of oxygen - SiO₂ - one of the main constituents of the Earth's crust, commonly known as quartz, and worked by humans for over 5000 years. From common sand we get the wonderful and highly Chestertonian thing called GLASS.

Now, last week I pointed to the humorous aspects of frogs and dragons - I have at least one bit of that sort of humour this week too, so when you have finished your drink you can proceed, and then I will tell you more about glass.

Swallow, then click here.
As a computer scientist, and a lunatic Chestertonian who moreover has spoken at three Chesterton Conferences, I usually have to find something suitable to express this unusual truth. I found it, and it is quite good - unfortunately the first time I tried to use it in a speech, I laughed so hard I could not continue for a couple of minutes. It's from "The Crime of Gabriel Gale" in The Poet and the Lunatics (Ah, you are seeing some more about my plans, are you?) when our hero has been caught observing a storm, and he says:

"I often stare at windows."

Yes, GG - me too. Even if the windows are not the Gates kind, most of the modern user-interface methods use such a layered, multi-panel approach. Yes, OK - it's funny. Now, let's get back to glass. And please don't bring up that Father Brown story about the absence of Mr. Glass, or I will start laughing. Hee hee hee.

OK, (ahem!) now that we have both regained some control... Recall where we are. We have just introduced very Chestertonian ideas: (1) the importance of gratitude and (2) the "Doctrine of Conditional Joy".

First, Chesterton urges us to be thankful for all things, even the dull or trivial or commonplace; this is the correct and healthy view of reality, and provides a working basis for true contemplation, whether it be scientific, literary, or philosophical. We're given this world (the KOSMOS, or universe) - all of it. We do NOT deserve it at all, and yet we have it. Even if it is not obvious what good it is - a frog, a sea-dragon, a telegraph, a pane of glass - we need to be grateful it is that and not something else. (An aside: this gets into a very deep piece of philosophy: the ontological idea of the perfection of being. But that is a steep and dangerous path. We shall merely note its blazes, perhaps for a future hike, and move on.)

Second, Chesterton points out that this grand delight in the ALL comes with a little warning label. We have the ALL, but only on conditions - and those conditions most likely seem crazily unrelated to anything. Even after some lengthy consideration, there seems to be no good reason for the imposition of such conditions, as slight as they may seem. But then (GKC asks) what's the reason for the grand gift? That's the point. Conditional Joy. (If this is not clear, we're about to see some more.)

These two ideas are the substrate (the foundation, the building blocks) of many fairy tales - and even some stories which are hardly considered such. But let us hear GKC:

This is the tone of fairy tales, and it is certainly not lawlessness or even liberty, though men under a mean modern tyranny may think it liberty by comparison. People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty. Fairy godmothers seem at least as strict as other godmothers. Cinderella received a coach out of Wonderland and a coachman out of nowhere, but she received a command - which might have come out of Brixton - that she should be back by twelve. Also, she had a glass slipper; and it cannot be a coincidence that glass is so common a substance in folk-lore. This princess lives in a glass castle, that princess on a glass hill; this one sees all things in a mirror; they may all live in glass houses if they will not throw stones. For this thin glitter of glass everywhere is the expression of the fact that the happiness is bright but brittle, like the substance most easily smashed by a housemaid or a cat. And this fairy-tale sentiment also sank into me and became my sentiment towards the whole world. I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
[CW1:259-260]

Ah, recall some weeks ago I said we would hear more about glass? Here it is - or perhaps I should say here it comes. But let us consider what we've just read, and not skip the unfamiliar parts.

What is Portland Gaol? Well, "Gaol" is the English spelling for "jail" (both come from a Latin word cavea = a cavity or cage).

What is Fleet Street? A street in London, built on the long-vanished Fleet River. But the term is often used as a symbol more than as a geographic reference, as it was (and still is, I am told) the centre of what we now call "The Media" - the site of all the big newspapers - which is why GKC mentions "journalists" in oblique apposition to it. (SO when GKC says "Fleet Street" you can just about always read "The Media" and you'll have it - just remember it's also a real place that GKC walked along...)

Now that you know these terms, please look at this one line again:

"People out of Portland Gaol might think Fleet Street free; but closer study will prove that both fairies and journalists are the slaves of duty."

I think that is a grand line. It was anticipated in GKC's Browning where he says this deeply profound line:

we forget that free speech is a paradox.

We are bound to tradition if we wish to communicate, far more tightly bound than those kept in Portland Gaol. Even "liberals" (modern sense) from the Far Left bow in humble submission as deeply as conservatives (modern sense) when they speak and write - they may try to redefine "is" but don't dare take that method very far - especially when it comes to their paychecks! Any of us, from whatever point in the political spectrum, might bend the rules when we speak or write - but we writers risk losing our readers if we go too far. Free speech is indeed a paradox, and so is free writing. No wonder St. John's most grand line - the grandest of the whole Gospel - is this: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" - the line in the Last Gospel at which we genuflect, like in the English hobby of change-ringing of bells, where the great "tenor" bell is rung after all the others, as all the possible patterns are rung..., or the 01000111 pattern coming every 188 characters in an MPEG stream on cable TV - it keeps us in sync... Ahem. Sorry I was distracted; it is so thrilling to write about this. And someday, if you remind me, I will write something on what he means about fairies being the slaves of duty. But for now let us go back to GKC and glass.

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 not doing something 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 the miller's third son said to the fairy, "Explain why I must not stand on my head in the fairy palace," the other might fairly reply, "Well, if it comes to that, explain the fairy palace." 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?" If I leave a man in my will ten talking elephants and a hundred winged horses, he cannot complain if the conditions partake of the slight eccentricity of the gift. He must not look a winged horse in the mouth. And it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture. The veto might well be as wild as the vision; it might be as startling as the sun, as elusive as the waters, as fantastic and terrible as the towering trees.
[CW1:260]

Yes, indeed - in Egypt there are pieces of glass some three or more thousand years old. The wonder of glass... In another essay GKC points out a marvel which seems to be lost on many people these days, even intelligent ones, even computer people, lit'ry people, and philosophers. Here are the critical verses:

...behind all designs for specific windows stands eternally the essential idea of a window; and the essential idea of a window is a thing which admits light. A dark window cannot be a good window, though it may be an excellent picture. ... There is an almost infinite variety of meanings which can be expressed by windows and pillars and all other forms of artistic workmanship - but they have their indwelling limitations. They cannot express darkness in a window or a surrender in a column of stone.
["The Meaning of the Theatre" in Lunacy and Letters]

It is worth considering. How does that link? Because carbon is not silicon! (A window might be made of carbon in its form of diamond, but it won't be nearly as beautiful as it would be if it were cut into dozens of facets.) Because a frog is not a sea-dragon, nor a telegraph! (See my writing from last week.) There is a variety of things in Fairy Land - and in the real world - and they really are different, and not to be confused, even when they are mixed. A wizard does not tell the hero "wave the dragon over the wand and it will vanish" - it only sounds like drunken babble.

Yes, there are some other side paths here, but let us attend to the main trail. We are exploring this "Doctrine of Conditional Joy" - and I must stress something here. We are NOT talking about this abstractly! This "Doctrine" (though it may sound academic, or theoretical) is a real idea, and had its powerful effect on GKC... like this trail, it leads us onward to something more. Re-read how he rephrased it:

"...it seemed to me that existence was itself so very eccentric a legacy that I could not complain of not understanding the limitations of the vision when I did not understand the vision they limited. The frame was no stranger than the picture."

Ah, you sigh. Now you grasp something deeper - and something unexpected - in that famous quote about the frame. Yes. And there's a reason GKC continually weaves, and re-weaves, and links, and re-links: Like a good mystery, like a good story, like a good computer program, like a good sweater or meal or family, like - like Reality - all things relate to all things - and to the ALL: "all things in the universe are at least relevant to the universe."

Recall, a few weeks ago, how I said something about GKC always dealing with vision? Like free speech, vision is a paradox too, with mystic and eccentric limitations. We must be grateful.

--Dr. Thursday
Thank you Dr. T. for this marvelous post.

Taking Umbridge

New Yorker says:

But his core readers are mainly conservative pre-Vatican II types who are indignant about his neglect without stopping to reflect whether their own uncritical enthusiasm might have contributed to it.

I beg to differ. I personally am not a "conservative pre-Vatican II" anything. I'm not a liberal post-Vatican II anything either. And I don't know many Chestertonians who are either.

We are an extremely diverse group, I'd say. I am always amazed at the variety of people who show up at any Chesterton events: from truck drivers to nurses, to DC lobbyists to PhD Computer Scientists. From triple PhD Physics professors to homeschooling homemaking mothers. From Jew to Gentile, from Protestant to Catholic, from young to old, from Greek to Norwegian. There is nothing homogeneous about us, no category to fit us into, other than a mutual love of a certain large writer.

And to say that we, the American Chesterton Society are the contributing factor to Chesterton's lack of popularity today seems to me absolutely absurd. And offensive. Ridiculous. Paradoxical.

Commonweal thinks it is a mistake to defend the anti-Semitic allegations in the New Yorker Chesterton article.

Second Spring goes ahead and defends our man.

GKC in current New Yorker

I'm hearing through the grapevine that there's an article on our man in the current New Yorker and I'm curious to know if anyone's seen it yet?

I'll have to make a trip to my library tonight.

Chestertonian Twins

The picture of Del Teeter and Ross Arnold has surfaced. I have listed them (paradoxically) from right to left, instead of the usual left to right.

Del, you dared me, so here it is!

Wall Street Notices Chesterton?

OK, this is amazing.

Important days this weekend

Saturday June 28
1869 Frances Blogg was born
1901 Gilbert and Frances married
1932 My father, Kenneth James Carpentier, was born.

Sunday June 29
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul - beginning of the Year of St. Paul (there
are special indulgences; I'll see if I can find a link)

Dr. Thursday has speculated that GKC can be considered a disciple of St. Paul
(Thursday March 20) but we also might note how St. Paul is a convert, a
brilliant thinker and a prolific writer... certainly both men had a
great love for our Lord....

Things to ponder this weekend. And have a piece of cake for Frances, Ken, and the Gilbert and Frances anniversary.

Young Catholic Ladies "Get" GKC

Very refreshing.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Telegraphs, Dragons and Frogs (Oh my!)
GKC's "Doctrine of Conditional Joy"

Before you proceed, please finish your drinks and snacks. (Hey, why are you eating or drinking at the keyboard?) I warn you now, as you may find some of today's writing rather funny. I do.

In preparing to write these Thursday essays, I do a variety of mental tricks to get into the Chestertonian view of things. No drugs, no "virtual reality" gear - often not even a beer - I merely rely on the high tech device known as "books" and the physiology of sight. What a gift. I have a few hundred books nearby to help jumpstart me when necessary, and some are even by Chesterton. But some are not.

One of the curious books I have is the Roman Ritual, this edition printed in 1898, which has some fantastic multi-window graphics, such as our Lord being baptized by St. John (whose birthday we celebrated on Tuesday). I may deal with it more another time, because it has hints of explanation about certain things in Chesterton's writing - but today I shall tell you of one, quite apropos both because of John-the-Baptist and also the medium you are presently enjoying: there is a "Blessing of a Telegraph"! Yes. It is begun by the chanting of the Benedictus, the song of St. John's father and the great Morning Canticle of the Church (Lk 1:68-79). That is followed by Psalm 103 (104), with the antiphon "Blessed are You O Lord, Who makest the clouds thy chariot: who walkest upon the wings of the winds, Who makest thy angels spirits: and thy ministers a burning fire." [103:3-4] The allusion may perhaps be lost on the modern age, as most computing devices rely on 5 volts or less... in the old days things worked on somewhat higher voltages, and so there was a reason that the radio and telegraph people were called "Sparky"!!! Recall also that "angel" is a function, (a job description, if you will) - it means one who carries a message! The telegraph with its sparks is angelic - and thus the Church recalls this powerful image from the Psalms when her minister blesses such devices.

Does that seem just a bit childish? Yes, it does to me, too. Good. You see, as I had cause to state to someone in another context, God gets His hand into everything, unless we work to shut Him out. It's all due to that line in the Creed, per quem omnia facta sunt = "Through Him all things were made."

Yes - all things. Even telegraphs - and dragons.

Remember, I am not the first one to link these disparate thoughts. (Nor was GKC; he just said it more memorably.) I merely recall the famous line "I have often thanked God for the telephone" from GKC's 1910 book What's Wrong With the World (CW4:112). But in this thought - and in particular in that psalm - there is not simply a sense of awesome order, a sense of profound power, a sense of majesty, and a sense of deep and careful planning.

There is also something else. There is, as hard as it will be for you to believe, a sense of humor.
Click here to have laughter and more.

Yes, there is humor. And also something more beyond even that, which we shall hear more about as we proceed. But first the humor.

Consider - remembering the bishop (or priest) is blessing a telegraph, as the choir sings:

...Draco iste, quem formasti ad illudendum ei...

Yes, that says "draco" - Latin for "dragon", one of the north circumpolar constellations, and also the genus of a "small arboreal lizard of the East Indies"... But maybe here it means what you think it means - a big monster, probably aquatic, possibly fire-breathing. (His friends call him "Sparky"... hee hee)

Now, depending on what translation you have at your disposal, you may wish to read to the verse numbered 103(104):26. The Douay version gives this as "...This sea dragon which thou hast formed to play therein" [in the great sea]. The Jerusalem version is even funnier: "... and Leviathan whom You made to amuse You." ("Leviathan" is a crocodile or a whale - er what some call the dragon - I mean the dragon-like creature you and I know as "Sparky". Hee hee.)

Now, while you are pondering the mystic sense of God being entertained at watching these great sea creatures jumping and cavorting, as He claps and laughs like a child at their antics (see Job 38:7 but especially Proverbs 8:30-31) - you ought to recall some of our animal friends we have met previously on this journey, like the giraffe, or the turkey. Today we meet another, as GKC transcribes for us a boyhood riddle. I shall give you the context, because while the gem is important, the setting is far more so. Remember some weeks ago we heard "Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame." [CW1:243] Yes, I think you wrote it down, it's quite important. Now you will begin to see how we apply such things. (But please finish your drink before proceeding. I've told you twice now.)

The goodness of the fairy tale was not affected by the fact that there might be more dragons than princesses; it was good to be in a fairy tale. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom. Children are grateful when Santa Claus puts in their stockings gifts of toys or sweets. Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs? We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers. Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
There were, then, these two first feelings, indefensible and indisputable. The world was a shock, but it was not merely shocking; existence was a surprise, but it was a pleasant surprise. In fact, all my first views were exactly uttered in a riddle that stuck in my brain from boyhood. The question was, "What did the first frog say?" And the answer was, "Lord, how you made me jump!" That says succinctly all that I am saying. God made the frog jump; but the frog prefers jumping.
[CW1:258]

I might as well explain here that this is the foundation motif of GKC's writing, and is of all things he wrote the most important, even transcending his work on humility and pride (though clearly coupled together, as you'd expect!) He was not just thankful for the exciting things - the candy and toys - but for the mundane that no one notices (like legs) or the exotic and dull human things (like the telephone!) Yes, indeed - and note he doesn't thank Parliament or the King or the phone company - but God.

How else can he say, "I have often thanked God for the telephone"?

Because God had His hand in that too. (No; I will not talk about Galvani, Ampere, Maxwell and the rest here; that's for another time.)

You see, unlike others who quarrel or complain, GKC saw (with a shock, like the frog) these things have their purpose. They have been called into existence, directly or indirectly, by divine arrangement, not just the obvious and necessary (the legs) and the pretty and delightful (flowers and candy) but even the strange exotic and curious (the sea monster/dragon, the telegraph, and so on.)

Whew. We are at a peak here, as you see. You sense that term - the "rapture of the heights" - in the sheer hilarity of the moment, which is simultaneously profundity. The silliest bit about a frog (or any animal you care to substitute) is directly connected with something as utterly important and foundational as thanksgiving - remember the very term used for the great Sacrifice of the Mass is "Eucharist" - Greek for "thanksgiving"... And so (I heave a sigh) as your guide I must now point to the next part of the trail. This curious meditation on how the strangeness of reality leads to the height of gratitude - but it leads onward as well, to something rather difficult. Come along.

But when these things are settled there enters the second great principle of the fairy philosophy. Any one can see it who will simply read "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or the fine collections of Mr. Andrew Lang.

[An aside: Grimm and Lang books are available from Dover.]

For the pleasure of pedantry I will call it the Doctrine of Conditional Joy.
Touchstone talked of much virtue in an "if"; according to elfin ethics all virtue is in an "if." The note of the fairy utterance always is, "You may live in a palace of gold and sapphire, if you do not say the word 'cow'"; or "You may live happily with the King's daughter, if you do not show her an onion." The vision always hangs upon a veto. All the dizzy and colossal things conceded depend upon one small thing withheld. All the wild and whirling things that are let loose depend upon one thing that is forbidden.
Mr. W. B. Yeats, in his exquisite and piercing elfin poetry, describes the elves as lawless; they plunge in innocent anarchy on the unbridled horses of the air -

Ride on the crest of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame.

It is a dreadful thing to say that Mr. W. B. Yeats does not understand fairyland. But I do say it. He is an ironical Irishman, full of intellectual reactions. He is not stupid enough to understand fairyland. Fairies prefer people of the yokel type like myself; people who gape and grin and do as they are told. Mr. Yeats reads into elfland all the righteous insurrection of his own race. But the lawlessness of Ireland is a Christian lawlessness, founded on reason and justice. The Fenian is rebelling against something he understands only too well; but the true citizen of fairyland is obeying something that he does not understand at all. In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened, and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten, and cities perish. A lamp is lit, and love flies away. A flower is plucked, and human lives are forfeited. An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone.
[CW1:258-9, emphasis added]

Do you see? Please read this again. You will find an important idea, and also two lit'ry allusions. I will handle them first so you can go past them to the important idea, which is not literary but computational. (hee hee)

GKC mentions "Touchstone" - at first I figured that this was some dull heretic, perhaps someone he missed dealing with in Heretics. But I looked around, with the power of AMBER, and found out that he is a clown - a character in a play called "As You Like It" - and in Act 5 Scene 4 you will find this:

I knew when seven justices could not take up a quarrel, but when the parties were met themselves, one of them thought but of an If, as, 'If you said so, then I said so;' and they shook hands and swore brothers. Your If is the only peacemaker; much virtue in If.

Then there is the quote from Yeats, which I am told is from his play called The Land of Heart's Desire.

Now, as a computer scientist, an "IF" is one of the foundational elements of software - it is the idea that a mechanical determination of the truth or falsity of something can be made, and from that determination, a change is made as to which path the future work of that machine will follow. This "conditional device" can be as simple as a thermostat sensing a temperature difference and switching on the heater (or cooler) - or it could be the more interesting determination of whether a given number is larger or smaller than another - and so on. You may be expecting me to quote a rock song, so I will: the very Tolkienesque "Stairway to Heaven" has this:

Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There's still time to change the Road you're on.

Two paths and the Road - possibly hinting at Bilbo's Road (that goes ever on), and the debate between Gandalf and Aragorn about crossing the Misty Mountains - but I also hear our Lord saying "I am the Way" [Jn 14:6]... ah... I could also quote the song "Free Will" by Rush: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"... But (ahem!) I cannot lecture about conditional paths now, when I am trying to guide you to an understanding of "Conditional Joy"!

Please read this line again:

"In the fairy tale an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition."

Do you not hear this:

And the Lord God took man, and put him into the paradise of pleasure, to dress it, and to keep it. And he commanded him, saying: Of every tree of paradise thou shalt eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat. For in what day soever thou shalt eat of it, thou shalt die the death.
[Genesis 2:15-17]

Sure you do. And just in case you overlooked it, GKC adds: "An apple is eaten, and the hope of God is gone." [CW1:259]

Yes, but now hear again my quote from last week:

"Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed." [The Defendant 3]

Fairyland.... We are there, even if you cannot quite see it.

But now you know.

Amazing, isn't it? Yes, weep if you must, but then dry your tears and laugh - and be refreshed.

This the sort of thing that happens when you visit the Elves. And you will find even more surprises as we proceed. You must learn to be grateful for them.

--Dr. Thursday.

What Chesterton Work Are YOU Reading?

Right now, I'm reading The Man Who Was Thursday over again for a project I'm working on. But I'm one of those multi-task readers who is also reading a book on St. Paul, a recently-published novel by a friend, and a yet-to-be-published novel by another friend.

What are YOU reading?

Meeting Up with David Zach

Over the weekend, Futurist David Zach met up with us at the Milwaukee Lakefront Festival of the Arts, and informed my husband that he collects Art Deco antiques (pdf file), which Mike thought was funny for a futurist.

Another Conference Blog post

People are slowly but surely distilling the conference, and talking about it on their blogs.

These are fun to read, and get different perspectives. Here's another.

Conference Notes

Notes about David Zach.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Learning to See What is Really There

When Frances and Gilbert Chesterton are canonised, as I hope and pray for, one of the many patronic activities he ought to undertake is for all who deal with the eyes - opticians, optometrists, ophthalmologists - and all who read, and all who study the world. One might easily assemble a large collection of GKC quotes by which this very strong sense of a concern for our VISION is expressed. You may probably recall my favourite, which I quote from time to time:

Most probably we are in Eden still. It is only our eyes that have changed.
[The Defendant 3]

which has its echo here: "the most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven." [TEN CW2:226] And, far more important to our topic, in this poem:

"The Mystery"

If sunset clouds could grow on trees
It would but match the may in flower;
And skies be underneath the seas
No topsyturvier than a shower.

If mountains rose on wings to wander
They were no wilder than a cloud;
Yet all my praise is mean as slander,
Mean as these mean words spoken aloud.

And never more than now I know
That man's first heaven is far behind;
Unless the blazing seraph's blow
Has left him in the garden blind.

Witness, O Sun that blinds our eyes,
Unthinkable and unthankable King,
That though all other wonder dies
I wonder at not wondering.

[Collected Poems 63-64]

Are you wondering yet? You should be. But let us return to last week's stopping point, and see what more we can see.
Click here to SEE more.

Nursery tales, fairy tales - fantasies. Not simply science texts, not source material for graduate work in literature, not signs of a defective or immature intellect - No - they are medicine, and enrich all the fields of Wisdom:

...even nursery tales only echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement. These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.
[CW1:257]

Remember, O scientist, that you must see what is there before you go back to the lab and dream about what might be behind, beyond, under, over, or within... Remember, O lit'ry person, that your characters and plots, your complications and your imaginations are to embolden, as a signpost to us who are on the Road, whether it be of "Nice View, Pull Over" or "Caution: Bump Ahead" or "Do NOT Enter!" Or, perhaps, "Turn Here for a Better Road".

The next few lines are a bit complex - they are very interesting. They look at first to be about science - then they seem to be about literature - you may discover they have a curious jab at the philosophers... It is a curious thing, that we may advance in reason by forgetting, indeed, by being agnostic? Is that what he says? Yes, but be careful to read it with attention, and think about the rivers and what they run with:

I have said that this is wholly reasonable and even agnostic. And, indeed, on this point I am all for the higher agnosticism; its better name is Ignorance. We have all read in scientific books, and, indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstacy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
[CW1:257]

Yes, tricky. There is a famous line, "Know Thyself" which (according to my Bartlett's Quotations) was claimed by Plutarch to be inscribed on the Delphic Oracle, and ascribed by him to Plato; but Pythagoras and others...

Clearly this is an interesting aside - but it is an aside. It is a reminder that all the interesting things around us still cannot help us know the one thing that is really interesting - our own self. It may be trite for me to mention a theme song from a TV show, but GKC stooped to such tritenesses. There is one which makes me think, very pungently, of our Lord, and the great verse of Genesis, "Let us make Man in Our own image." It is this:

No one could ever know me
No one could ever see me
Seems you're the only one who knows
What it's like to be me
[The Rembrants, "Friends" theme song]

Yes, only He does know this, because we certainly don't. Why delve into this? Because it is a reminder to ALL the fields of Wisdom that they omit this most important aspect of our studies...

Now, do not lose heart here. This healthy, forgetful agnosticism is not what we're here for. I said it was almost an aside, though an important aside. Look at the next bit, please:

But though (like the man without memory in the novel) we walk the streets with a sort of half-witted admiration, still it is admiration. It is admiration in English and not only admiration in Latin. The wonder has a positive element of praise. This is the next milestone to be definitely marked on our road through fairyland. I shall speak in the next chapter about optimists and pessimists in their intellectual aspect, so far as they have one. Here I am only trying to describe the enormous emotions which cannot be described. And the strongest emotion was that life was as precious as it was puzzling. It was an ecstacy because it was an adventure; it was an adventure because it was an opportunity.
[CW1:257-8]

Wow, verbal fireworks doubled, tripled - and all kinds of things to unpack!

First, admiration in English is "marvelling esteem accompanied by gratification and delight" or "observation attended by such esteem". In Latin, miror, mirari (a deponent verb, if you wish to know!) means "to wonder, be astonished at".

And praise... I cannot go into this just now; it would bring up a long discussion of the marvellous five verbs at the beginning of the Gloria... but not just now. Note, too, GKC tells us this is our next topic, and note that this is NOT disjoint from what we were talking about - about LAW and about reality, and such things - and about Story, with the capital S.

Then we come to that other troublesome word (I skip ahead here for pedagogical reasons; on real hikes you cannot take the third step BEFORE the second!) - I mean the word "adventure". All of you who have read Tolkien's The Hobbit will recall the very famous dialog of Bilbo with Gandalf at the very beginning - "Adventures! Nasty, inconvenient things. Make one late for dinner." [I quote from memory]

Behold, a junction on the Road! Bilbo meets Uncle Gilbert:

"Adventures are to those to whom they are most unexpected - that is, most romantic. Adventures are to the shy: in this sense adventures are to the unadventurous." [GKC, Heretics CW1:74]

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."
[ILN July 21 1906 CW27:242]

Now, the one bit I skipped, which comes suitably after mentioning Bilbo, where GKC says "life was as precious as it was puzzling". (hee hee: Riddles in the Dark, anyone?) Ahem. But this word here is cross-connected to our larger topic, that is to elfland, and to reality. In a very few pages we shall read one of the keystone settings of GKC's "motif" about glass, which he felt was most precious:

I felt and feel that life itself is as bright as the diamond, but as brittle as the window-pane; and when the heavens were compared to the terrible crystal I can remember a shudder. I was afraid that God would drop the cosmos with a crash.
[CW1:259-260]

Here is not the time to go further into that particular trail - but the allusion to glass links back to my title. Glass is wonderful, and windows a delight (I mean the lower-case kind, Mr. Gates) but there are certain "indwelling limitations" in these things, which GKC discusses in the splendid discourse on the Seven Windows in Lunacy and Letters. (Again I do not refer to the brittle/smashing aspect, which we shall see when we get to that part of the text.)

Rather, I refer to the transparency of glass and the clarity of windows. (Quiet, please, Mr. Gates!)

"For behind all designs for specific windows stands eternally the essential idea of a window; and the essential idea of a window is a thing which admits light." [Lunacy and Letters, 41]

Perhaps this seems to have wandered very far. No; I am trying to join in other matters. We are struggling along on a great journey which others have also made; some have gone a different route, but gotten to where we are by other means, such as St. Thomas Aquinas,

a very great man who reconciled religion with reason, who expanded it towards experimental science, who insisted that the senses were the windows of the soul and that the reason had a divine right to feed upon facts, and that it was the business of the Faith to digest the strong meat of the toughest and most practical of pagan philosophies. ... St. Thomas insisted that it was lit by five windows, that we call the windows of the senses. But he wanted the light from without to shine on what was within. He wanted to study the nature of Man, and not merely of such moss and mushrooms as he might see through the window, and which he valued as the first enlightening experience of man.
[GKC, St. Thomas Aquinas CW2:430-1, 525]

Please jot that down somewhere nearby. You need to remember that one phrase: "The sense are the windows of the soul." That's what is going on here. We are seeing things as they are, but we are still using windows, even when we talk of retinas or mesons or galaxies... Perhaps you do need to go along this side path just a little, so you'll see what I mean:

When a child looks out of the nursery window and sees anything, say the green lawn of the garden, what does he actually know; or does he know anything? There are all sorts of nursery games of negative philosophy played round this question. A brilliant Victorian scientist delighted in declaring that the child does not see any grass at all; but only a sort of green mist reflected in a tiny mirror of the human eye. This piece of rationalism has always struck me as almost insanely irrational. If he is not sure of the existence of the grass, which he sees through the glass of a window, how on earth can he be sure of the existence of the retina, which he sees through the glass of a microscope?
[ibid CW2:528]

Yes, nursery games, fairy tales. They help us see what is really there: grass, sun - and retina.

If you want to know yourself, you might find no better way than to get to know the Elves. ("Elves, sir!" cried Sam Gamgee.)

--Dr. Thursday

Photo Request

From the comments box:

If you get your hands on the rare photo of Del Teeter standing next to Ross Arnold in matching 25th Annniversary Shirts, please let me know!

If anyone can help Del out, please do! Thanks.

Discovery of More Conference Blogging

I'm very sorry I missed the blogging of the Chesterteens, but I have now discovered it. They are posting about the conference and their experience, which is fun to read.

We Have a Winner!

Thanks to all those who entered the 100,000th hit contest, we had a great turnout and you all are so great, and are truly my favorite blog readers and posters.

So now, to announce the lucky winner of the fabulous prize, a recording of the Innocence of Father Brown on CD, recorded by the talented actor, Kevin O'Brien. I have had a preview of this recording, and it is so fun. I hope those of you who didn't win will put it on your wish lists. And I want to particularly thank Ignatius Press and Carl Olson for their generous donation.

The winner is: Entry #15: m All I can tell is you are male and a programmer and live in Purgatory, USA, which is pretty interesting. "m": Please e-mail me your address, and the CDs will be on their way to you.

Thanks again to all who played along with our contest.

Deadline extended to July 1st for Chesterton papers

If you are interested, you have a little more time to get your proposal in.

Vote for Chesterton!

The Summer Reading Program at Aquinas and More is asking for votes to narrow down the reading choices to the top three for the summer. Please go vote for Chesterton!

Thanks.

Dale's New Do

After all the conference talk, no one has yet mentioned to me about Dale's completely new hairdo. Lookin' good, Mr. President!

Last Day to Enter 100,000th prize drawing

Happy 100,000 hits, American Chesterton Society Blog! We've had a lot of entries (20) so you still have a good chance to win. You have until tonight at midnight.

Prize here.

Contest info here.

For some reason, Kevin O'Brien hasn't entered yet. Hmmmm...

Pictures Please

I'd love to see and post pictures from the conference, so don't be shy now, email them to me.

Prayers Update

John is doing much better, baby David is doing much better, thanks for praying.

Please pray for our family, who had a Voldemortish incident occur over the weekend. Actually, it reminded me of the anarchists in The Man Who Was Thursday. Thanks.

More Conference Follow Up

Carolyn's post here.

Kevin was thinking as he made a detour.

Crying with the Chestertonians

I got this message from Dave Zach this am, and I cried when I read it. Because I was cursed and was not present except for my mind, heart and soul, which constantly flew to the conference, and wanted so badly to be there.

And now I raise my glass with you, and expecially to all you, who like me, longed to be there but couldn't:

The Toast to the American Chesterton Society

Dale asked me last night to give this toast, which sort of threw me into a slight panic because it takes me a lot of time to wrestle words to the ground so they'll do what I say. Probably the best proof of that is the fact that my favorite comments after my talk came from two of the Chesterteens (Katie and Sarah, actually) who quite excitedly came up after the talk, holding out their notebooks and said, "You can hear your semi-colons!" "You can hear your punctuation!"

And, I guess you can because I wrestle with the punctuation marks too. [The following bit did not happen, but after chatting with Eleanor Bourg Donlon, who has the same sort of love of language, I should have then and there toasted semi-colons and then toasted giggling teens who actually can spot a semi-colon from thirty paces. I regret this error.]

But I accepted the challenge, gave it a try and here it is:

First of all, I want to share with you one of my favorite drinking toasts:

We are all mortal until our first kiss and our second glass of wine. Eduardo Galeano said that.

And then I found this one this afternoon:

In Vino Veritas
In Cervesio Felicitas

(In Wine there is Wisdom
In Beer there is Joy.)

And this is my favorite romantic toast.

Won't you come into the garden?
I want my roses to see you.

Richard Brinsley Lord Sheridan said that one.

Of course, that's not really a romantic toast but it is a charming thing to say and and it is a romantic thing to say and one of the most important lessons we learned this weekend is that we must defend romance.

On Wednesday night we had a small dinner for the speakers and the Alhquist family. At the end of the dinner we all did toasts. As I was near the end of the line, I kept mine short. I've always loved the St. Cripins's Day speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, so I toasted, "We few, we happy few . . . "

And now, with apologies to Will Shakespeare, Joseph Pearce and, well, everyone one else in the room and, well, everyone else outside of the room,

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers & sisters & Sisters & Fathers,

For those today that have paid attention with Ross, committed suicide with Sean, went mad with Tom, did not go mad with James, were delighted by the romantic Father Dwight, were Shaken (and stirred) by Joseph, enchanted by our lovely Elfin Jen, hit the road with William, found sense & sensibility, but no pride or prejudice with Sara, united for the Trinity with Scott, laughed with Dale, laughed at Dale, and shed their tears with Geir,

They shall be our friends; be they Catholic or Protestant, or anyone else simply trying to find their way home,

These days here have gentled our condition;
And gentlefolk around the world now-sitting before a dull TV
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and will hold cheap
their cell phones & laptops & teenaged major appliances
while Any speaks to tell the tale that they fought for
the permanent things with us upon St. Gilbert’s Day.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please raise your glass and toast the American Chesterton Society.

Thank you, Dave, from the bottom of my heart.

Conference Blogging Postlude

Fr. Dwight here.

Alicia here.

Ana asks if you can top her five starvacation.

And a final report from our intrepid yellow journalist, Kevin.

Conference Blogging

Must reads: Kevin's reports. Thanks you Kevin, you don't know how much your efforts are appreciated!

Contest Winner to receive prize

The prize is the coveted "O'Brien" edition of the Father Brown mysteries on audio CD, newly published by Ignatius, and graciously given to us as a gift from Ignatius Press (thank you so much!).

Be sure to go here to enter the contest, and I am now announcing that the contest will close on Tuesday, June 17th at midnight. Good luck, and happy anniversary!

Lonely Meatballs

Apparently, I inspired Dr. Thursday the other day with a comment about making supper. See what you make of this poem.

"Lonely Meatballs"
For Nancy, based on her idea.

Time to make dinner
kids get your crayons and toys and your books out of here
(I need a beer)
Look in the pantry
Thank God they had pasta and sauce and the jello on sale
Thank God for Ale!

All the lonely meatballs...
My cooking has begun
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Out in the kitchen
stirring the sauce in the pot on the stove in the heat
"When do we eat?"
Wash your hands NOW, kids,
Water is boiling, hey kids get out forks, cups and mats
And pasta vats!

All the lonely meatballs...
I buy 'em by the ton
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Look at it cooking,
Taste to be sure that the garlic Oh no I have added too much
Look in the hutch
Add some more sauce - fixed.
Now for the meatballs I baked and I froze: In the pot!
Stir until hot...

All the lonely meatballs...
(A salad would be fun)
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Chop up some lettuce,
They say that using a knife in that way is a crime
I got no time.
Oil 'n' Balsamic
(Spendthrift and miser) a pinch of the salt and mix well
(Shake it like h*ll!)

All the lonely meatballs...
Lord how the time doth run!
All the lonely meatballs,
I'll have to taste just one.

Yeah, there's some cheese left.
Find some wine, darling, then get me the grater out please?
(Rhymes about cheese!)
Yes, it's al dente,
Sit yourselves down kids, and darling will you take your place?
Now we'll say grace...

All the lonely meatballs...
Thank you God for each one
All the lonely meatballs,
Our dinner has begun.

Conference Blogging

Jennifer Overcamp's talk on Elfland via Kevin.

Conference Blogging

A report from Kevin from Thursday night and Friday morning.

Thanks, Kevin!

Contest

I am hereby and forthwith announcing an American Chesterton Society Blog Contest!

As our stat counter is immenently about to turn or perhaps has already turned, 100,000 hits, visitors, persons, that is; we are about to celebrate this fact.

How we celebrate is thus: with cake, ice cream, and a contest.

You will put your name in the comments box, wishing us Happy 100,000th Birthday! Your name will be entered into a drawing. If you win, you will win a prize. Chestertonianly, I don't have a prize yet, but I'm working on that.

UPDATE: WE'VE DONE IT! 100,129 this am! I think it is totally appropriate that we did it during the conference. Keep the entries coming! The prize is something Chestertonian.

Conference Blogging

Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Carolyn Hansen

John DeJak

Kevin O'Brien


If you know of any others, let me know, please.

Prayers

Gosh you guys, your prayers work. John is out of the hospital, and feeling better. Test results are not in yet, but he's doing ok. Thanks for praying.

Another prayer request has come in: please pray for the Carter family, who lost their little kindergarten-aged daughter due to complications from pneumonia this week. This family, her friends and teachers are grieving the loss of this innocent little child. Thanks for praying for the Carter family.

Dr. Thursday's Post

Change is NOT GOOD: Reality and Law and Magic
Or, "Mere life is interesting enough."

No I am NOT at the conference this year. That wasn't possible for me, due to various dull complications. Mere life, as you shall see.

Because of other dull complications, this morning I had to set up another means of e-mailing myself using this "web" method everybody seems to like. If I had time I would have written the program myself, but I don't. It IS Thursday. And, much like Chesterton, who reacted profitably to his surroundings, even when he was late for a train, I have taken a verse from that horrible "web" mail program to drive today's posting.

This poorly scripted web thing, from a most poor company, proclaims "Change is Good".

Dante didn't say so, but I believe that that epigram is burnt into Satan's tongue... Ahem! I said I wasn't going to get into demonology here. Yes. Instead I will do it another way. Let's see. Let us use a syllogism: a bit roughly formed, yes, but who knows "Barbara Celarent" any more?

Premise 1: We assume that "Change is good."
Premise 2: At present in America we do not permit ownership of slaves.
Premise 3: It is a change to go from not permitting ownership of slaves to permitting it.
Thus we deduce: It will be good to permit ownership of slaves.
BUT: we know that ownership of slaves is bad.
THEREFORE: we have logically demonstrated that "change" is NOT good. Correct. (Thank God.)

Certainly "Change" is an aspect of the nature of time, BUT there are things that do NOT change:

There must in every machine be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeable.
[GKC What's Wrong With the World CW 4:116-117]

Today, we are going to learn more about this, and why it is so. I know some of you will have a problem with my use of the "M" word, but perhaps, after today, you won't. In any case, you will now need to use magic. Wands out, please... OK you are going to be stubborn? Then I will have to call in the Law...

Click here to advance.Actually that's the whole mystery of today's study. Law and magic, things that repeat and things that change, even if they don't change much. Like sunrise. And if I stepped on a lot of toes last week, you ain't seen nothin' yet. (We shall consider pages 255-256 of CW1 today.)

Now that we all got our boots on, let's stomp some toes - ready?

In fairyland we avoid the word "law"; but in the land of science they are singularly fond of it.
[CW1:255]

All the white-lab coat gang cringe. Sure! There are Newton's Laws (really Buridan's of course, for those of us who've been keeping up with the history of science). There are Kepler's Laws - no, Galileo, modern science does NOT agree with you; they are ellipses, not circles! Boyle and Snell and Steno and Ohm and Ampere and (all bow) MAXWELL'S LAWS... yes.

But (as they pull their chemical stained hankies from their lab coats and sniffle) Chesterton goes on to say:

Thus they will call some interesting conjecture about how forgotten folks pronounced the alphabet, Grimm's Law.[CW1:255]

The lab-coated ones look around... is Chem? no; Geo? no; Physics or Bio? No, nope... wait a second .... they look around frantically...

Oh, ho! the boot is stomping on the other side of the aisle!

GRIMM ISN'T A SCIENTIST. And they are brothers - LITR'Y brothers. (also known as "Liberal Arts") Yeah, these are the same Grimm brothers that did the fairy tales - but they also did some philological thing or other - you know, the mechanics of language, like Tolkien. (The Law is something like this: the "p" in Latin and Greek becomes "f" in Germanic languages, which is why Latin has pater and English has father, but there are exceptions and all kinds of modifications... well. This is part of what GKC is getting at.)

But for the moment, it's just hilarious to see that bunch squirm, because like all the historical fields, there is no science (in the scientific sense) in them. There is, in the Latin sense - for there is knowledge. If we ever do GKC's The Everlasting Man we'll hear more about that sort of "science". And you ought to be hearing GKC on this, not me:

But Grimm's Law is far less intellectual than Grimm's Fairy Tales. The tales are, at any rate, certainly tales; while the law is not a law. A law implies that we know the nature of the generalisation and enactment; not merely that we have noticed some of the effects.
[CW1:255]

Sure, and now the philologists agree - they love Tolkien, and the brothers Grimm, even if they've long since modified their Law. But now, of course, the lawyers will be throwing torts and subpoenas and all their weaponry at us. (I prefer strawberry tort, myself.) But it is best if they read it, and find they too must agree:

If there is a law that pick-pockets shall go to prison, it implies that there is an imaginable mental connection between the idea of prison and the idea of picking pockets. And we know what the idea is. We can say why we take liberty from a man who takes liberties.
[CW1:255]

Ah, now you feel some harmony about that syllogism I started off with. They tried a verbal firework ("Change is good") but it went off in their faces - for slavery is not good. After all, there must be something unchangeable...

Now, if we wanted to get into a REAL discussion about "law" in science, we might take Newton (Buridan) and see what happened when Einstein got into that whole speed of light thing. But besides being kicked by all the litr'ry people, the scientists would be screaming "You're forgetting Maxwell!" (with a bow, of course). But remember how, in past chapters, we saw that GKC makes a point, sometimes very sketchily, but always a sharp point? GKC is NOT setting up to argue Grimm's Law (or Newton/Buridan, or even Maxwell (bow)). He's trying to get to the essence of "LAW".

And the avenue he takes is the one most feared by some - the avenue of magic. And NOW we get to the really important thing.

Because the power of magic is not in its mechanism - for then it would be strict science (I mean physics, let us say, or another such branch). It is in its AUTHORITY. At stake is not the means - I distill various materials in my lab, and make a stick, and wave the stick and it glows ... because of the oxidation of luminol, or the friction of red phosphorus with potassium chlorate, or a spiral of tungsten, or perhaps a layered arrangement of certain doped semiconductors, wired together with a metal and reactive chemical power source - and so on. Those means, as mystical and as occult (remember that means HIDDEN) as they are, are completely natural, and straightforward for anyone to accomplish with some training and understanding of the terms.

But - if a certain person walked into a forest, danced around a tree in the dead of night, then picked a branch from it and waved it thrice above his head, muttering some poorly conjugated Latin imperative - and it burst into flame - why, then we are talking about authority - this is NOT something to be explained by chemistry or electronics, and one does not find it in standard reference books. Either he is working by divine power (which is good) or by abuse of divine power (which is evil). Obviously, you can light your flashlight which you bought in a department store and use it to help rescue a stranded traveller - or to burgle a house - again, you are working either by divine power, or abusing it - and no occult issue arises.

We are NOT exploring magic. We are getting at an issue. The Great issue. The reality of things, and the idea of "law" which makes things as they are in our world... and it must be understood, not as a clever game (like Grimm, or even Maxwell (bow)!) but as a personal power, somehow attached to one who is able to make choices... that is, as Magic.

But let GKC tell you:

All the terms used in the science books, "law," "necessity," "order," "tendency," and so on, are really unintellectual, because they assume an inner synthesis, which we do not possess. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, "charm," "spell," "enchantment." They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. ... I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic. It is the only way I can express in words my clear and definite perception that one thing is quite distinct from another; that there is no logical connection between flying and laying eggs. It is the man who talks about "a law" that he has never seen who is the mystic.
[CW1:256]

We must here turn, for a moment, to see how incredibly high we have journeyed today. We are at the almost unimaginable height, where science and law and even Grimm's Law and its literary congeners meet - and we find a path leading upwards labelled "Story". GKC does not here advance along it, but he notes a little of its character. You can find an excellent essay, "On Fairy-Stories" in A Tolkien Reader and the essential guidebook in GKC's The Everlasting Man CW2:380. But for now, you may be content with even this glimpse:

Just as we all like love tales because there is an instinct of sex, we all like astonishing tales because they touch the nerve of the ancient instinct of astonishment. This is proved by the fact that when we are very young children we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough. A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door. Boys like romantic tales; but babies like realistic tales - because they find them romantic.
[CW1:256]

I thought I would have more to say, but I cannot say it now; I find this overwhelmingly lovely and am now impelled to resume my work...

You might read some more; try to get to page 260 if you can; this is all the same matter, and deserves reading, re-reading, and discussion. I shall resume on the topic next time.

Do not forget that on Saturday we celebrate the 72nd anniversary of the departure of GKC for the Inn at the End of the World. Let us pause for a moment in prayer, and gratitude for this great man.

Monsignor Smith anointed him and then Father Vincent arrived in response to a message from Frances which he thought meant she wanted him to see Gilbert for the last time. Taken to the sick room he sang over the dying man the Salve Regina. This hymn to Our Lady is sung in the Dominican Order over every dying friar and it was surely fitting for the biographer of St. Thomas and the ardent suppliant of Our Lady:

"Salve Regina, mater misericordiae, vita dulcedo et spes nostra salve.... Et Jesum benedictum fructum ventris tui nobis post hoc exsilium ostende...."

Gilbert's pen lay on the table beside his bed and Father Vincent picked it up and kissed it.

It was June 14, 1936, the Sunday within the Octave of Corpus Christi, the same Feast as his reception into the Church fourteen years earlier. The Introit for that day's Mass was printed on his Memorial card, so that, as Father Ignatius Rice noted with a smile, even his Memorial card had a joke about his size:

The Lord became my protector and he brought me forth into a large place. He saved me because he was well pleased with me. I will love Thee O Lord my strength. The Lord is my firmament and my refuge and my deliverer. [Ps17:19-20, 2-3]

To these words from the Mass, Frances added Walter de la Mare's tribute:

Knight of the Holy Ghost, he goes his way
Wisdom his motley, Truth his loving jest;
The mills of Satan keep his lance in play,
Pity and innocence his heart at rest.

[Quoted from Maisie Ward's biography, Gilbert Keith Chesterton 650-651]

Requiescat in pace. Gilbert and Frances pray for us, and lead us to the Everlasting Man.

--Dr. Thursday

Innocence of Father Brown on CD-Now Available

The ACS's own Kevin O'Brien presents a dramatic reading of Chesterton's most famous detective fiction. Now available via Ignatius Press.

The 2008 Chesterton Conference begins today!

As the first session isn't till the dinner tonight at 6pm, I suspect that all across America today, people are driving, flying and boarding trains with high anticipation. What is more exciting than a train station? Or an airport terminal? The smells, the sounds, the feeling you get in the pit of your stomach. Something exciting is about to happen, and you're on your way. The trip is part of the excitement, and helps set the stage for the next three days.

God bless ChesterCon08! Long Live ChesterFest! *Clink* Would that we could all be there this year! Next year in Jerusalem!* Amen! *Clink*

Prayers

Please pray for John. He is in the hospital as doctors run tests on his heart. (Joan says he was cutting the grass when all his strength left him.)

John is one of our ACS members, and frequent contributor to Gilbert magazine. Also the founder of the magazine.

Please also pray for safe travels for all those attending the Chesterton conference this week.

UPDATE ON JOHN from Dale: I spoke with Joan this morning. The doctors will be doing tests on John to determine if an infection has gone to his heart. He has a weak heart valve, and he doesn’t do well with infections. So it is the worst combination. He appreciates our prayers.

Thanks for the prayers, and keep them coming.

Exposing my Ignorance: Telos Magazine

Today was the first time I came across this magazine. James Schall, who also writes for Gilbert magazine, has written something on the centenary of the publication of Orthodoxy.

Blog Administration

It has been noted that our stat counter (over on the left and down a bit) is approaching 100,000 hits. We shall celebrate with style.

Blogger has allowed one to prep ahead posts (for example, when your blogmistress is out of town and might not be allowed on the internet by various and sundry thrifty-minded hotels) and keep them as drafts. However, one must then somehow get on the internet to release these "drafts" from prison and post them.

Then, recently, Blogger began a new service called "Scheduled" posts, where one could create a draft and then say when the post should be posted, and Blogger would "hold" these scheduled posts until the correct time, when they would be automatically posted.

Blogger seems to have lost this ability (perhaps temporarily) and so I noticed that posts I had "scheduled" appeared as "published" as if in the future.

So, I hope this explains the problem to anyone who wondered about it.

Suessical, Jr.

If you live near St. Louis (or will be there June 13 or 14th, you'll want to check out this performance of Suessical, Jr.

Blogging from the Conference

A good friend, lucky enough to be going to the conference AND blogging about it to boot; we'll be following his note-taking with interest next week.

The Annual Chesterton Conference Needs Your Help

And I don't just mean money.

Although we do take money.