The Blog of the American Chesterton Society

Anarquia: The Novel

2009-11-28T04:09:00.001-06:00

An alternative universe sci-fi fantasy involving the Spanish Civil War and including a character by the name of G.K. Chesterton. Has anyone read it? Sounds intriguing.

Local Paper Interviews Head of Local Chesterton Society

2009-11-27T12:03:00.001-06:00

Bob Cook, local leader of the Chillicothe, Ohio Chesterton Society, got himself in the local news! Way to go Bob!

Now we know WHO to thank!

2009-11-26T06:35:00.003-06:00

No time to write - so I will just give you GKC...
Happy Thanks Giving Day!
--Dr. Thursday

Paganism could make things; it could make festivals and festive days; it could make an alternative to Christmas, if it were still alive. But the modern Pagans cannot. The modern Pagans are merely atheists; who worship nothing and therefore create nothing. They could not, for instance, even make a substitute for Thanksgiving Day. For half of them are pessimists who say they have nothing to be thankful for; and the other half are atheists who have nobody to thank.
[GKC's broadcast to the US, Dec 25 1931, reprinted in Chesterton Continued by John Sullivan]

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?[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:258]

[shortly after asking this, GKC responds:]

...magic must have a meaning, and meaning must have some one to mean it. There was something personal in the world, as in a work of art; whatever it meant it meant violently. ... I thought this purpose beautiful in its old design, in spite of its defects, such as dragons. ...the proper form of thanks ... is some form of humility and restraint: we should thank God for beer and Burgundy by not drinking too much of them. We owed, also, an obedience to whatever made us.
[GKC Orthodoxy CW1:258]

Maybe it is time for us to actually THINK about what Chesterton wrote, and not just read him, comment on him, criticise him - but begin to imitate him - for he truly enacts that very famous directive of St. Paul:

Dedicate yourselves to thankfulness. [See Col 3:15]

Or, as we say in every Holy Mass:

Gratias agamus Domino Deo nostro.
Dignum et justum est.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.
It is right and just.

Happy Thanksgiving

2009-11-25T06:47:00.000-06:00

Thanks for being here with us, reading, commenting, and praying.

This Thanksgiving, let's thank God for our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and all our ancestors, who, through their generosity and innocence, thought having children was "worth doing". We don't know all the sacrifices they made for us, we can only guess at it from the sacrifices we've had to make for our families. Let us pray that we continue to be generous to Life, and love our children and others to the point of sacrifice, in imitation of Him.

Conversion of an Anarchist

2009-11-23T12:52:00.002-06:00

Working on #11

2009-11-21T12:27:00.000-06:00

I just returned from a two week work trip to Florida, and I'm starting to think about the next podcast. My young friend Shaylynn sent me this graphic to use for it (thanks!) which I'll put on the next episode. If I remember how to. ;-)

I've been wanting to do an entire episode on Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy, so this is going to be it. I've got so much to say about this book, so many good things I've learned, so much insight into Chesterton's life and spiritual journey, all good stuff to talk about.

So, grab your book, brush up on its contents, and get ready.

Christ the King - of Literature and of Engineering

2009-11-19T10:15:00.004-06:00

I was playing with one of my little toys recently - oh yes, since I am a computer scientist, I get to play with all kinds of the best toys! Indeed, without shame I can tell you that I have even played with dolls when I taught a class in computer science...

Oh, my dear Chestertonians, if only you could see as I do, how clearly Chesterton has grasped the truth which Newman proclaimed in his Idea of a University, a truth which students of all fields need to learn:

I never can really feel that there is such a thing as a different subject. 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. It is my psychological disease (since one must have a psychological disease of some sort nowadays, and this is the best I can do), it is my psychological disease that I never can see disconnected things without connecting them together in a train of thought.
[GKC ILN Feb 17 1906 CW27:126]

Well, as I said, I was playing with one of my toys - it is a nice toy since (like Santa) I made it myself. It's rather a bit like a LEGO or Erector Set or those boxes of thousands of plastic things which snap together - or snap into pieces when your brother walks on them. The nice thing about this toy is it is all inside the computer so no one can step on it, and you can do all kinds of fun things with it:
It is kind of like that old game called "Sim City" which let you be the mayor and raise taxes (ahem!) and arrange for urban development or fight Godzilla or whatever. If my toy was sold in stores they would probably call it "Sim Atom" since it is a kind of do it yourself chem lab. Very nice - except it takes an awful lot of time to play with. But I got most of the amino acids to come together, though some are giving me difficulty. But I must not bore you with such technicalities.

No, for there is something more I wish to tell you about, how this little toy relaxation (which may yet lead to much more serious experiments - only God knows who may read this posting!) relates to some more common toys - and to Chesterton.

There were two great Christmas gifts always longed for by children in the days my childhood: (1) art sets of any kind, especially that grand yellow-and-green box with the unforgettable odor, filled with the colored ranks of little organ pipes - er - I mean crayons. And (2) train sets - the larger the better. We Chestertonians will immediately note the common link: these are the tools of creation: (1) God's very own rainbow, diced up into little cylinders which fit perfectly into your hand - and (2) Man's own magic tool, the train.

Since GKC is an artist, the thread of colours runs all through his writing - but the power of AMBER (or is it really my guardian angel) suggested this rich paragraph to illumine this first topic:

It is not for nothing that the very nature of local character has gained the nickname of local colour. Colour runs through all our experience; and we all know that our childhood found talismanic gems in the very paints in the paint-box, or even in their very names. And just as the very name of 'crimson lake' really suggested to me some sanguine and mysterious mere, dark yet red as blood, so the very name of 'burnt sienna' became afterwards tangled up in my mind with the notion of something traditional and tragic; as if some such golden Italian city had really been darkened by many conflagrations in the wars of mediaeval democracy. Now if one had the caprice of conceiving some city exactly contrary to one thus seared and seasoned by fire, its colour might be called up to a childish fancy by the mere name of 'raw umber'; and such a city is New York. I used to be puzzled by the name of 'raw umber,' being unable to imagine the effect of fried umber or stewed umber. But the colours of New York are exactly in that key; and might be adumbrated by phrases like raw pink or raw yellow. It is really in a sense like something which the satiric would call half-baked. And yet the effect is not only beautiful, it is even delicate. I had no name for this nuance: until I saw that somebody had written of 'the pastel-tinted towers of New York'; and I knew that the name had been found. There are no paints dry enough to describe all that dry light; and it is not a box of colours but of crayons. If the Englishman returning to England is moved at the sight of a block of white chalk, the American sees rather a bundle of chalks. Nor can I imagine anything more moving. Fairy tales are told to children about a country where the trees are like sugarsticks and the lakes like treacle, but most children would feel almost as greedy for a fairyland where the trees were like brushes of green paint and the hills were of coloured chalks.
[GKC What I Saw In America CW21:87]

Now let us proceed to consider the train set, which art ranks far lower (alas) in the eyes of the ignorant academic. But it should not, for its art is closer to Man's, though not opposed to God's! J. K. Rowling showed herself a great Chestertonian when she made the Hogwarts students ride to school on a train, for the train is unspeakably magic even in our own world as Chesterton knew:

The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories.
[GKC The Man Who Was Thursday CW6:479, emphasis added]

Yes, and he also says "Hogwarts" and lo, it is Hogwarts! And he does it without wands! But there is something more to say about the train. My boss at my first job, a licensed professional engineer and one of the greatest men I have ever known, once told me that the steam engine is a true engineering marvel - and he knew whereof he spoke. But he was simply paraphrasing Chesterton (and perhaps anticipating Rowling):

The false type of naturalness harps always on the distinction between the natural and the artificial. The higher kind of naturalness ignores that distinction. To the child the tree and the lamp-post are as natural and as artificial as each other; or rather, neither of them are natural but both supernatural. For both are splendid and unexplained. The flower with which God crowns the one, and the flame with which Sam the lamplighter crowns the other, are equally of the gold of fairy-tales. In the middle of the wildest fields the most rustic child is, ten to one, playing at steam-engines. And the only spiritual or philosophical objection to steam-engines is not that men pay for them or work at them, or make them very ugly, or even that men are killed by them; but merely that men do not play at them. The evil is that the childish poetry of clockwork does not remain. The wrong is not that engines are too much admired, but that they are not admired enough. The sin is not that engines are mechanical, but that men are mechanical.
[GKC Heretics CW1:112-3]

Now, I have combined the two great toys, the splendid box of paints and the awesome engine that rolls along the rails, and made an organ whereon I might play with the music of the spheres. Except where God's spheres were vastly large by our measures, these spheres are vastly small, for they are atoms - and yet they move.

Now why do I claim that these things are so Chestertonian? Because I can give barely relevant quotes to colour my thoughts, to drive my ideas, as if by steam pistons, home? No - because these technical AND artistic things (for I sit squarely on the fence in such debates) are just one way by which I express the great Tolkien concept of subcreation, written about at length by Dorothy Sayers in her The Mind of the Maker: the chief way that Man images God the Creator is that Man sub-creates! When I tire of subcreating with the formal syntax of programming languages and the rigor of the finite state machines we call computers, I open a new window (hee hee) and go back to Quayment - that is, to my other subcreation which is a box of paints and a toy train. Quayment is my fictional little town on the bay, with its bookstores and restaurants and railroads, its lighthouse and its docks and its huge "young cathedral" high on the north hill, and the fascinating and curious lives of its inhabitants. For the writing of fiction is also a subcreation - even though its rigors, its terrors and its joys, are far stronger than the modelling of atoms - and far more dangerous. For though these things are merely products of the human mind, they are far closer to the human heart. Ah, the delights of my little town! There is a song by "Journey" called "Lights" which says: "When the lights go down in the city and the sun shines on the bay - Oh, I want to be there, in my city...." Yes, indeed, and so I come to understand how Christ wept over Jerusalem...

What? (you say) Are you insane?

Certainly. But then some said that of GKC, and of GKC's Master. You all know I am no literary scholar, but I note in both Orthodoxy and The Everlasting Man that GKC examines what he calls "Christ's literary style". [CW1:351, CW2:332] Christ Himself often told stories, and so sanctified literature as He preached to the crowds as He sanctified engineering as He laboured in the carpenter shop of Joseph. You see, for Chesterton, and for me, there really is no such thing as a different subject since Christ is King of the Universe - for (as we have read) all things are relevant to the universe.

What is that you say? How dare I suggest Christ be concerned with trains or with fantasy fiction - with engineering or with literature?

Oh silly goose. How slow you are to understand.

Even Tolkien stated, in the famous essay "On Fairy Stories" in The Tolkien Reader which gave us those master-words of subcreation and eucatastrophe, that Christ is the Lord of Angels and Men - and of Elves! Of course He is! He is the Lord of engineering, of software and of aerodynamics, of atoms and stars - but also of their study, of plays and poems, and of all the works of Men. Or do you reject the idea that He inspires us with all good things? Heavens, no. You must hear again what Chesterton about Man, or you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven:

[Religion] is a thing which, by its nature, does not think of men as more or less valuable, but of men as all intensely and painfully valuable, a democracy of eternal danger. For religion all men are equal, as all pennies are equal, because the only value in any of them is that they bear the image of the King.
[GKC Charles Dickens CW15:44]

Being a Tourist at Home

2009-11-18T06:55:00.003-06:00

I travel a lot, but that never seems to make travel less exciting (except for the lumpy beds, that is). Every part of this beautiful country is so amazing.

Last week, coming down south, we passed through the rain that was once Hurricane Ida, and what became the torrential rains of the east coast. Shortly after passing through Tennessee, we heard about the rock slide, and saw with amazement that someone caught the whole thing on video.

Now, as we're coming back, it never occurred to me that the rock slide would bother our travel, but we have to detour around it today. In Tennessee, people here have to detour around it every day, they're saying, till next year. Wow. And still, as we're driving, I can't help but think what a beautiful country this is.

Wonder and awe at detours

2009-11-17T05:11:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, our family was able to witness the launch of Space Shuttle Atlantis and it was an awesome sight. Wow. As I lifted my eyes into the heavens to see those men and women soaring into space, well, I just felt so amazed that we had accomplished such an unbelievable feat. I said a prayer for their safe journey, which again reminded me that there are people on the space station, and we should constantly be praying for them, too.

Almost just as amazing: we travel the highways quite a bit, and the way humans have engineered road work projects is really amazing. No longer do you need to leave the road, but they've figured out how to keep you on the road (maybe you're driving on what used to be the shoulders, but you're still basically on the same path) even while doing huge roadwork projects.

Both are amazing things: roadwork, and shuttle work. Man truly is an amazing being.

Prayer and Wonder - or, the Mistake about the Computer

2009-11-12T08:31:00.003-06:00

I had a fascinating and wonderful experience last weekend - I threw my star charts into my vehicle and went to visit some dear friends in a distant star system... Ahem, I guess I ought not go into details about who they are or how I got there. But they are Chestertonians, and there are one or two experiences I wish to tell you about.

First, their church was having a festival that weekend and to my delight they had a used book table! I found a small book by Father Hardon called The Theology of Prayer which I grabbed - a glance told me it was a critical reagent in my current experiment of developing a new text on the technology of prayer... and - even better - once I started reading it, I learned that it contained the answer to an issue we Chestertonians are concerned with! Oh yes. In fact, it ties into... no, no. It forms the true basis for the larger issues, such as government, economics, and education, and the Great Evil of the age - the hatred of life - which Chesterton called "Eugenics" and which goes by other names in our time.

But in order to set the stage for this discussion, I must tell you about another matter. I donned my doctoral robe for a brief time on Sunday evening and gave a miniature lecture to a bright young man of 14. Earlier that weekend I had been speaking with his father on the "Magic Box" of our modern days, and how all who touch it become endowed with supreme intelligence and wisdom, regardless of their knowledge of automata theory, the XOR, the mutex, recursion, floating-point, ASCII and all the magical tools within that Magic Box. We laughed as I said it is as silly to credit a 7 year old child with "knowledge" of the Computer because he plays with it for an hour in the classroom as it is to credit him with "knowledge" of the Internal Combustion Engine because he rides in a big yellow bus containing one for an hour on his way to and from that classroom! Oh yes.

So, just for fun, I decided to ask my young friend whether his father had shown him the really stupid math mistakes a computer can make.

He stared at me - as if I had asked him about the edibility of rocks.

Oh, yes, I told him, I know a very simple math problem that I knew he could perform (since he was 14) but was beyond the ability of the computer to handle. Again he stared, as if I had said that most pigs are seen in floating the air.

So I told him I would show him. It is something, I said, as easy as doubling a number. Of course he already knew one plus one is two, two plus two is four... and I proceeded to rattle off the powers of two up to the 20th power (since I use many of them at work, I have them ready to hand - nothing surprising there). I scribbled this series down on a scrap of paper and he nodded.

1
2
4
8
16
32
64
128
256
512
1024
2048
4096
8192
16384
32768
65536
131072
262144
524288
1048576

All that was obvious to him. So I asked him, if I had you do this doubling another dozen times, on paper, would you have any problem? Of course he smiled and shook his head. But I think he was starting to wonder what this was leading to, and began to feel uneasy.

So, I smiled and asked, will the series of doublings ever get smaller?

HUH??? he asked. Smaller? How can that happen?

Oh, I pointed to the computer. Let's just ask the computer to try this very easy little homework project, shall we? So I typed in a very tiny program, which began with one and repeatedly doubled it, counting 20 loops. It produced the exact list of numbers I had already scrawled on paper and listed for you above.

He shrugged, and I smirked. Now, let's just have the computer repeat until the doubled number becomes SMALLER. I typed in what must look like the silliest program ever phrased to a computer - completely sound, and accurate and valid, but something never usually conceived of by most programmers. Rather than show you the actual code, I want you to imagine writing these instructions to someone:

Start with one, and keep doubling it until the new number becomes smaller than the previous number.

Very nice. Then, I said, once the doubled number has become smaller, print "I am finished" and stop.

What? Oh, all right, I will show you the code...


#include "stdio.h"
main()
{
 int i,j,k;
 
 i=1;
 k=0;
 do  {
  j=i;
  i=j+j;
  printf("Loop %d: %d doubled is %d\n",k,j,i);
  k=k+1;       
  }
 while(i>j);

 printf("All done.\n");
}

I pointed to the screen, and asked my young friend: So, will the computer ever stop?

But he is smart and did not say "NO" - instead he shrugged. So I said, let's see what the computer will do - and I ran the program - and this came out:

Loop  0:           1 doubled is 2
Loop  1:           2 doubled is 4
Loop  2:           4 doubled is 8
Loop  3:           8 doubled is 16
Loop  4:          16 doubled is 32
Loop  5:          32 doubled is 64
Loop  6:          64 doubled is 128
Loop  7:         128 doubled is 256
Loop  8:         256 doubled is 512
Loop  9:         512 doubled is 1024
Loop 10:        1024 doubled is 2048
Loop 11:        2048 doubled is 4096
Loop 12:        4096 doubled is 8192
Loop 13:        8192 doubled is 16384
Loop 14:       16384 doubled is 32768
Loop 15:       32768 doubled is 65536
Loop 16:       65536 doubled is 131072
Loop 17:      131072 doubled is 262144
Loop 18:      262144 doubled is 524288
Loop 19:      524288 doubled is 1048576
Loop 20:     1048576 doubled is 2097152
Loop 21:     2097152 doubled is 4194304
Loop 22:     4194304 doubled is 8388608
Loop 23:     8388608 doubled is 16777216
Loop 24:    16777216 doubled is 33554432
Loop 25:    33554432 doubled is 67108864
Loop 26:    67108864 doubled is 134217728
Loop 27:   134217728 doubled is 268435456
Loop 28:   268435456 doubled is 536870912
Loop 29:   536870912 doubled is 1073741824
Loop 30:  1073741824 doubled is -2147483648
All done.

Of course it stopped after the 30th repeat - as I expected - and he started laughing. (So did I - I have a very low humour threshold, as you may know by now.)

When I had control again, I told him: Now you have seen a computer perform a very trivial, elementary arithmetic problem and get a completely WRONG answer. And he smiled and nodded. But I said, let us be clear about what is going on here. I then set up another very similar program which started with one and continually added one to the previous value, until the total got smaller. However, I ordered the computer to print the LAST number before the decrease.

Before I ran the program I asked my young friend how fast he could count: Could you count to two billion I asked. Again he stared, wondering how long that would take. (In case you are wondering too, at one number a second, it would take over 63 years.) So, I said, you know you are good at counting, but you are slow. Let's see how the computer handles this new problem... and I started it running.

In a very short time (under a minute) the computer printed 2147483647, which was the last number it had counted to - yes, by ones - before it added wrong and got something smaller.

He laughed again. Then I said: Now you have seen, very briefly, the correct view of the computer. It is faster than we are, but it is still making a mistake, for we, unlike it, know that numbers do not decrease when we add one to them! We must always know and understand the tools we use, and their particular limitations - for the computer is NOT magic! Just as a car is not legs, a computer is not brains: it does not "add", it does not "think" - though it can do wonderful things, if we are careful about using it. (If you want to know MORE about this and why, see me after class. Hee hee!)

Now, what does this lengthy narrative have to do with prayer - and with Chesterton?

Simply this: the first and foremost act of worship of God, what the theologians call "adoration" is simply wonder at God - at Him as He is, at His creation, at His inspirations by which we poor fallen men make bridges and software and cakes and poems and rock songs, at His work to enter our human family and make Himself part of our world. We need to admire Him for what He is, which we know through what He does, directly or indirectly. (cf. Eucharistic Prayer IV: "All Your actions show Your wisdom and love.") We need the true view, since "the object of my school is to show how many extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur himself to the single activity of seeing." [GKC Tremendous Trifles 6]

Which is why I did what I did: in two tiny programs I gave my young friend a miniature lesson in the true view of computers, and he could wonder - he could admire them for what they are.

I can now answer the question our esteemed blogg-mistress posed some weeks back about wonder and why the modern world seems to have lost its sense of wonder. There is a theological reason for it. People sense that wonder arises from the surprising power and goodness and delight of God, in Himself and in His works - and they do NOT want to be reminded that He is responsible.

This is why there are lots of people who do not like Chesterton. They do not want to be reminded of God, of His work in Creation (cf. any of Jaki's works) or of His work in sub-creation (cf. Tolkien, Sayers and GKC) or of His work in what we call "Salvation History". But for me, and some friends such as I visited recently, Chesterton and creation and computing - and pedagogy (what and how we teach) - and the Church and wonder and prayer are all inter-related. Hence, in order to renew the sense of wonder in our world, we must begin with God. And you will find as you proceed that you will include addition and computers and fantasy stories and poems and rock music and cakes and all kinds of things: "But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice: and all these things shall be added unto you." [Luke 12:31]

No wonder GKC wrote "I never can really feel that there is such a thing as a different subject." We can entertain ourselves with our studies of philosophy and literature, our tech and television and sports and drink-and-drugs, and "fruitless adult activities", but they are only distractions to keep us from facing Reality. (See GKC on this in his book on Aquinas.) There really isn't any such thing as a "different subject" - all things are God's and point to Him, and to see them all we need to do is open our eyes:

The axe falls on the wood in thuds, "God, God."
The cry of the rook, "God," answers it
The crack of the fire on the hearth, the voice of the brook, say the same name;
All things, dog, cat, fiddle, baby,
Wind, breaker, sea, thunderclap
Repeat in a thousand languages -
God.
[GKC "the Notebook" quoted by Maisie Ward in Gilbert Keith Chesterton 64]

Or, as was written almost three millennia ago:

The heavens shew forth the glory of God, and the firmament declareth the work of his hands.
[Ps 18:2]

Special Treat

2009-11-11T06:46:00.003-06:00

In case I haven't convinced you that you need to listen to the CDs from the Rochester Conference, I was listening yesterday and discovered that a very special guest introduces Dale at the talks: his wife Laura! Laura gives some "insider" information that you won't want to miss.

Find the CDs here.

High School Chesterton Class OnLine Starting in Feb 2010

2009-11-10T07:19:00.001-06:00

From Maureen:

Hey Nancy!

Wondering if you can help promote Robert Gotcher's Chesterton course coming up next semester. It's an evening course so it wouldn't be restricted to homeschoolers. Catholic students in other schools would be welcomed too. It'd be cool to get Chesterton out to as many high school kids as possible! The link is http://tinyurl.com/hschesterton

Dr. Gotcher picked the 2 books that Kolbe and MODG students need to read so this class would be helpful in fulfilling those school requirements. A nice bonus!

For people who like to save money, there's a $10 off coupon that expires this Thursday: r1ns52. Plus there's also an early registration discount that expires 12/31/09. So, if they register with the coupon this week, they'd save $25. Pretty sweet.

Anything you can do to get the word out to the Chestertonians would be superbalous!

Seattle Conference CDs NOW AVAILABLE!

2009-11-09T20:36:00.000-06:00

Come and get 'em!

Uncommon Sense #10

2009-11-09T06:18:00.001-06:00

New Leaf Theater in Lincoln Park, IL puts on The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton and adapted by Bilal Dardai for a new audience. Tickets available until November 21, 2009.
I talk first with Jessica Hutchinson, the director of the play, and then with Deb Lillig, who attended the play to find out more about how this 100 year old play came to life.
Rochester, NY Re-awakening Wonder Conference CDs are available now here.
Chesterton and the Romance of Orthodoxy by William Oddie available here.

http://newleaftheatre.org/

Web sites:
http://chesterton.org
http://americanchestertonsociety.blogspot.com
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com
(Pictures: Left is Deb, next to her is Jessica)

Uncommons Sense #9 is posted

2009-11-06T08:39:00.003-06:00

Victoria Darkey recently attended the Re-Awakening Wonder conference in Rochester, NY sponsored by the Rochester Chesterton Society.
Vicky relates the highlights of the conference.
Vicky tells us how she came to start her own Chesterton Society in Western Pennsylvania.
Conference CDs are now available for only $25 here.

Websites:
http://www.siministries.com/Store
http://chesterton.org
http://www.twitter.com/amchestertonsoc
FaceBook Fan Page: The American Chesterton Society
http://music.mevio.com

Tickets still available for The Man Who Was Thursday at New Leaf Theater now through November 21, 2009.

Tidbits

2009-11-05T07:01:00.004-06:00

Thanks to Dr. Thursday for the post yesterday and for trading post dates due to his travel schedule. Over the next two weeks, I'll be traveling, so posting may be sporadic.
Meanwhile, I'm working on two different podcasts, which I hope to finish up before I leave. Big changes are coming soon for the blog, so stay tuned.

Anglican-Catholic-Chesterton

2009-11-05T06:58:00.001-06:00

Thanks to alert reader Tzard:

Jeffrey is a new Catholic (ex Anglican Priest) who has good things to say. He uses the unshakable arguments of Chesterton to comment on the possibility of Anglicans joining the Church en-masse (per recent news from Rome).

Check it out.

Thanks for the tip!

GKC: on Love and Liberty

2009-11-04T12:35:00.003-06:00

I will not be able to write a posting for tomorrow, so I am rudely intruding into the rest of the week and posting a very interesting and relevant excerpt today, with the hope that it will provoke some discussion - or at least some thought.
--Dr. Thursday

... one very simple thing was true both of Love and Liberty; the gods of the Romantics and the Republicans. They were both simply fragments of Christian mysticism, and even of Christian theology, torn out of their proper place, flung loosely about and finally hurled forward into an age of hard materialism which instantly destroyed them. They were not really rational ideas, still less rationalistic ideas. At least, they were never rational ideas after they had left off being religious ideas. One of them was a hazy human exaggeration of the sacramental idea of marriage. The other was a hazy human exaggeration of the brotherhood of men in God. When the Romantic laid his hand on his Red Waistcoat and swore to George Sand or some other lady that their souls were two affinities wedded before the world was made, he was drawing on the Christian capital of the old ideas of immortality and sanctity. When he explained to his mistress in his garret the delicacy and dignity of cutting her throat and his own, and called it "the world well lost for love," he was really appealing to the old tradition of the martyr and the ascetic, who lost the world to save his soul. He was not, in any very exact sense of the word, talking sense. He was not uttering purely rational remarks; certainly not remarks that our more rationalistic generation would call rational. Often, when he had done himself particularly well with champagne and old brandy, he would let the cat out of the bag rather badly by calling the blanchisseuse or the artist's model "his bride in the sight of God."

Anyhow, he could not make the sort of appeals to deific faith or demonic jealousy, which constituted the vigorous love poetry of the age of Hugo and Alfred du Musset, without implying an immortal significance in passion, which the modern realists refuse to see in mere appetite. He could not so praise love without also praising loyalty. He might not admit that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Arthur; but he could not write at all without assuming that there was a sacred bond between Guinevere and Lancelot. The later sex writers would refuse to admit that there is any sacred bond between anybody and anybody else. The truth is that this mystical feeling about the love of man and woman was treated so clumsily that it fell between two stools. When it was really mediaeval, it could be preserved for ever in a story like that of Dante and Beatrice. When it was really modern, it simply fell to pieces, into little decaying scraps rather like wriggling worms, the hundred little loves and lusts of the modern sex novel. But the Romantics of the nineteenth century held it up in a sort of indeterminate pre-eminence; a dizzy and toppling idolatry; trying to make it at once as sacred as they thought good and as free as they found convenient. They wanted to eat their wedding-cake and have it. They wanted to make their wild wedding sacred without making it secure. They did put woman upon a pedestal; but they did not look to see if it was a solid pedestal.

Now, oddly enough, it was the same with Liberty as with Love. It was the same with the democratic ideal of political freedom for all. And Democracy is being criticised just now for exactly the same reason that Romance is being criticised just now. It is that all the sense there ever was in either of them rested on a religious idea. The nineteenth century took away the religious idea and left a sense that rapidly turned into nonsense. All men are equal because God loves all equally; and nothing can compare with that equality. But in what other way are men equal? The vague Liberals of the nineteenth century cut away the Divine ground from under Democracy, and Democracy was left to stand by itself. In other words, it is left to fall by itself. Jefferson said that men were given equal rights by their Creator. Ingersoll said that they had no Creator, but had received equal rights from nowhere. Even in the democratic atmosphere of America, it began to dawn on a great many people that it is very difficult to prove that men ever received the equal rights at all. In short, the Republican theory will turn out to be another form of Romance; and will be classed with the illusion of the too idealistic lover unless it can be reconnected with the positive beliefs from which it was originally borrowed. The Red Cap will follow the Red Waistcoat into the old clothes' shop unless it can be made something more than a fashion, or dipped in that enduring dye that coloured the red roses of St. Dorothy or the red cross of St. George.

[GKC ILN Aug 27 1932, also reprinted in All I Survey. Special thanks to Frank Petta and to my mother.]

For Dale's Roadies

2009-11-02T09:47:00.000-06:00

G.K. Chesterton: His Wit, Wisdom & Sanctity

Dale Ahlquist, author, TV host, and president of the G.K. Chesterton Society, presents an illuminating and inspiring talk on the wit, wisdom and sanctity of G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton was profound and prolific in his defense of Christianity and the Church, using his good-humored battle with words against various evils in today’s world. Free. Nov. 15, 7:30 p.m. Kolbe Academy-Trinity Prep, 2055 Redwood Road, Napa. Info, tony@ignatius.com

What I Said

2009-10-31T06:08:00.003-05:00

Lee blogs some thoughts about something I've often thought and feared myself about Chesterton.

It almost seems that his eminently quotable nature makes it easy to focus more on what he said and less on what he had to say. For too often the quotations are simply treated as quips that are now divorced from the larger contexts of cogent discussions of some significant topics.

I have this feeling almost weekly as I, like Lee, often search the Internet for Chesterton to see what people are saying about him or his work. Most often what I find is some quote of his used to the writer's benefit, and not an engagement with his ideas.

Loyola reviews New Leaf The Man Who Was Thursday

2009-10-31T05:40:00.002-05:00

Be sure to see the combox below where Nick Keenan of New Leaf Theater responds and invites your discussion of the play they have currently going on there, an adaptation of The Man Who Was Thursday.

I completely agree with Nick: the play is, whether good or bad, at least making people aware of the man G.K. Chesterton. Maybe it will help someone pick up the novel and actually read it for the first time. Maybe someone will wonder about Chesterton and read a biography of him. Maybe it will make some people think, and that, as we know, is what the mind is there to do.

If you've attended, I'd love to hear from you. I know of one person with tickets in her hands, and when she sees the play, I hope to hear from her. Maybe even do a podcast interview of it, which would be great, too.

And welcome Nick to the blog!

Read the Loyola review here, and also see Nick's comment and the link to more reviews.

If you attend this weekend and dress like an anarchist, you get a discounted ticket!

Rochester Conference CDs are here!

2009-10-30T06:03:00.000-05:00

You can now find the conference CDs from the Re-Awakening Wonder conference here, the entire set from the entire day is only $25! Order yours today.

"It is as" what?

2009-10-29T08:26:00.003-05:00

Rather than blogg myself into virtual tar - and virtual feathers - I shall refrain from responding to the quarrelsome, interesting and even hilarious comments for last week - apparently I really did cause some division, hee hee - since there are other things to say, though most of them must be deferred for the present.

To vary my complex (x+iy) metaphor - if you are an engineer, read this (x+jy) - Oh, am I alluding to something you don't know? Sorry, sometimes I naturally quote a fitting math epigram the way Chesterton would quote a fitting Latin epigram. Of course I was trying to be funny, since the number (x+iy) is called a "complex" number, made of both real and imaginary parts, though of course "i" (or "j") is just as real to us as "5"! (That"!" makes it even funnier, but let us defer that too, hee hee!) Yes, mathematicians dignify "i" (or "j") with the glorious term "imaginary" - one imagines GKC illustrating an addition problem (or one in phasor analysis or wave mechanics) with horns and forked tails etc... Oh my, hee hee! If you have ever read the wonderful "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip, you may recall one where Hobbes mentions some other forms of imaginary numbers like "eleventeen" and "thirty-twelve" Ah! What joy. Ahem. Of course numbers are real, including those called "imaginary" by mathematicians; they do wonderful things like make your electric light work, and your radio - and if you treat them poorly, you will find that you have overdrawn your bank account.

Ahem! but as I started to say, to vary my complex metaphor, let us turn to the other wing of the University and see what curiousities we can find lurking in the halls of language. Of course, since I am an engineer I am not expected to know very much Latin or Greek, but from my youth I had read the mystic Ambrosian "TE DEVM LAVDAMVS" scribed far about the main altar at our church, and seen the strange letters "A" and "W" on the altar itself. And I kept the visitors into the Control Room where we did work for A Certain Cable Television Company by putting Latin epigrams like Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? onto the big screens where the tool called WATCHER kept us informed about system status... But you are not interested in what I know or don't know, but in what Chesterton knew, which we begin to gain hints of by reading his books.

And just for fun, since one may say that I am biassed, or (worsely argued) that I didn't know GKC personally, I shall give you a nice little quote from someone else who DID know him personally, and who also read his books:

Chesterton by his intellectual inheritance from the high Unitarian English culture was highly sympathetic with the general classical culture of Europe. He could illustrate it and pass it on (often unconsciously), as could not a writer or a man who knew not the soul of that culture. He could not have conceived a world which should be of our civilisation in a fashion and yet not based on Latin and Greek.
I remember, some years before he was received into the Church and before he ever visited America, his asking me, as one with a wide experience of the United States, whether it were true that the Latin and Greek classics were there of no effect. I told him this was increasingly so, save in a very few academic coteries and, of course, in the ubiquitous and very numerous Catholic clergy, and those influenced by them.
[Belloc, On the Place of Gilbert Chesterton in English Letters 23-4]

Curious - but let us proceed. Besides, we shall come back to Belloc in order for me to explain my complex (hee hee) title for today.

Anyhow, in my explorations of GKC I have seen one or two Spanish words, a handful of German words, and a handful of Italian words, and a handful of Greek words, including some wonderful comments on learning Greek - see his Autobiography (CW16:60) for the startling revelation that the ancients did not write their Greek with accent marks! Of course as we know, they also wrote their Greek and Latin without spaces, which is hardly a simplification...

(See here for more on this item.) Ahem. But by far the two other languages we see in his writing are French and Latin. I've often wondered whether he used more Latin than French, but do not have the time to give all the details today. I can note a couple of lengthy bits, just to see how well you do without a dictionary:

The one case for Revolution is that it is the only quite clean and complete road to anything - even to restoration. Revolution alone can be not merely a revolt of the living, but also a resurrection of the dead. A friend of mine (one, in fact, who writes prominently on this paper) was once walking down the street in a town of Western France, situated in that area that used to be called La Vendée; which in that great creative crisis about 1790 formed a separate and mystical soul of its own, and made a revolution against a revolution. As my friend went down this street he whistled an old French air which he had found, like Mr. Gandish, "in his researches into 'istry," and which had somehow taken his fancy; the song to which those last sincere loyalists went into battle. I think the words ran:-
Monsieur de Charette
Dit au gens d'ici
Le roi va remettre
Le fleur de lys.
My friend was (and is) a Radical, but he was (and is) an Englishman, and it never occurred to him that there could be any harm in singing archaic lyrics out of remote centuries; that one had to be a Catholic to enjoy the "Dies Irae", or a Protestant to remember "Lillibullero." Yet he was stopped and gravely warned that things so politically provocative might get him at least into temporary trouble.
[GKC "The Red Reactionary" in A Miscelleny of Men 182-3]

Amazing! Now, I wonder what he said, and what it means. Here is a nice little project for someone to post about! Gee, maybe it is time for us to start homework assignments?

Here is another bit, again something curious which needs commentary:

We have ample evidence that the old leaders of feudal war could speak on occasion with a certain natural symbolism and eloquence that they had not gained from boots. When Cyrano de Bergerac, in Rostand's play, throws doubts on the reality of Christian's dulness and lack of culture, the latter replies:
'Bah! on trouve des mots quand on monte à l'assaut;
Oui, j'ai un certain esprit facile et militaire;'
and these two lines sum up a truth about the old oligarchy. They could not write three legible letters, but they could sometimes speak literature.
[GKC "A Defence of Slang" in The Defendant 107]

Now, let us go further into the past and hear GKC in the tongue of ancient Roma. There are several possible selections I could make where GKC quotes Aquinas or Virgil or others. He knows Juvenal's "Satires" well enough to apply his great dictum "quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, ("Who will watch the WATCHERs themselves?" - a line well known to the WATCHERs of Cable Television) into the excellent "Quis docebit ipsum doctorem?" (Who will teach the teacher himself?) which he wrote in "The Mad Official" in his A Miscellany of Men. Yes, that line would play well into last week's topic, but we must proceed.

That wonderful book of essays contains another glorious bit, which I will give you in a larger excerpt since it is pure delight - and of course because it deals with those great Chesterton topics, CHEESE and BEER:

I entered an inn which stood openly in the market-place yet was almost as private as a private house. Those who talk of "public-houses" as if they were all one problem would have been both puzzled and pleased with such a place. In the front window a stout old lady in black with an elaborate cap sat doing a large piece of needlework. She had a kind of comfortable Puritanism about her; and might have been (perhaps she was) the original Mrs. Grundy. A little more withdrawn into the parlour sat a tall, strong, and serious girl, with a face of beautiful honesty and a pair of scissors stuck in her belt, doing a small piece of needlework. Two feet behind them sat a hulking labourer with a humorous face like wood painted scarlet, with a huge mug of mild beer which he had not touched, and probably would not touch for hours. On the hearthrug there was an equally motionless cat; and on the table a copy of Household Words.
I was conscious of some atmosphere, still and yet bracing, that I had met somewhere in literature. There was poetry in it as well as piety; and yet it was not poetry after my particular taste. It was somehow at once solid and airy. Then I remembered that it was the atmosphere in some of Wordsworth's rural poems; which are full of genuine freshness and wonder, and yet are in some incurable way commonplace. This was curious; for Wordsworth's men were of the rocks and fells, and not of the fenlands or. flats. But perhaps it is the clearness of still water and the mirrored skies of meres and pools that produces this crystalline virtue. Perhaps that is why Wordsworth is called a Lake Poet instead of a mountain poet. Perhaps it is the water that does it. Certainly the whole of that town was like a cup of water given at morning.
After a few sentences exchanged at long intervals in the manner of rustic courtesy, I inquired casually what was the name of the town. The old lady answered that its name was Stilton, and composedly continued her needlework. But I had paused with my mug in air, and was gazing at her with a suddenly arrested concern.
"I suppose," I said, "that it has nothing to do with the cheese of that name."
"Oh, yes," she answered, with a staggering indifference, "they used to make it here."
I put down my mug with a gravity far greater than her own. "But this place is a Shrine!" I said. "Pilgrims should be pouring into it from wherever the English legend has endured alive. There ought to be a colossal statue in the market-place of the man who invented Stilton cheese. There ought to be another colossal statue of the first cow who provided the foundations of it. There should be a burnished tablet let into the ground on the spot where some courageous man first ate Stilton, cheese, and survived. On the top of a neighbouring hill (if there are any neighbouring hills) there should be a huge model of a Stilton cheese, made of some rich green marble and engraven with some haughty motto: I suggest something like 'Ver non semper viret; sed Stiltonia semper virescit.'"
The old lady said, "Yes, sir," and continued her domestic occupations.
[GKC "The Poet and the Cheese" in A Miscellany of Men 12-14]

Ah, class - let us recite this excellent epigram together!

Ver non semper viret sed Stiltonia semper virescit.

(Roughly, "Spring is not always green, but Stilton always turns green.")

Excellent! And now, before I leave for lunch, let us return to Belloc.

Now parallelism is a gift or method of vast effect in the conveyance of truth.
Parallelism consists in the illustration of some unperceived truth by its exact consonance with the reflection of a truth already known and perceived.
A truth may be missed by too constant a use, so that familiarity has dulled it; or by mere lack of acquaintance with it (the opposite danger); or by the repeated statement of it in false and imperfect forms. When the truth has been missed, it is recalled and fixed in the mind of the hearer by an unexpected and vivid use of parallelism.
Whenever Chesterton begins a sentence with, "It is as though," (in exploding a false bit of reasoning,) you may expect a stroke of parallelism as vivid as a lightning flash. Thus if some ass propounds that a difference of application destroys the validity of a doctrine, or that particulars are the enemies of universals, Chesterton will answer: "It is as though you were to say I cannot be an Englishman because I am a Londoner," or "It is as though you were to say that I cannot be an Englishman because I travel," or "As though you were to say Brown and Smith cannot both be Englishmen because one of them talks West Country and the other North Country."
[Belloc 37-8]

What is truly funny about this - and somehow chiming in with my previous posting about mathematics is this: The phrase "It is as though" only appears three times (more or less) in all of GKC's books I have presently available!!!

However, "it is as if" appears over 250 times.

The funny thing here is that Belloc's argument is correct despite this minor variation in terms. Of course, this is why we computer people learn not to use the standard solutions for the quadratic equation, since under some conditions small errors can creep in - oh yes. It is as if we must be ever vigilant in both our words and our numbers - but then Chesterton told us, as he quoted John Curran's famous "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" - this "is only what the theologians say of every other virtue, and is itself only a way of stating the truth of original sin." [GKC The Thing CW3:312] Yes! Let us be ever vigilant, both in our words and in our numbers, and so (as Milo did in The Phantom Tollbooth) defend the Kingdom of Wisdom against the Demons of Ignorance.

P.S. May I mention this? Please do NOT run those French quotes through a mechanical translator and post them. (I could have done that.) I gladly admit I do not know French, and wish I had time to learn it, and many other languages. However, if you desire to write a reply based on your authentic knowledge of the tongues and the issues being referenced, please do so, either as a comment or a link to a posting on your own blogg. There are plenty of such things to clarify, and we shall all benefit from hearing experts in these matters.

The International American Chesterton Society

2009-10-28T10:36:00.004-05:00

This morning, I was randomly checking statistics on the Fan Page of the American Chesterton Society on Face Book.

Besides a ton of American fans, (totalling 200+ right now), we also have some international fans from:

Estonia
Mexico
Indonesia
Norway
Italy
and
France!

I believe this makes us quite an international national society and I'm proud of us.

Podcast Contest

2009-10-27T16:24:00.002-05:00

Contest! Anyone who leaves audio feedback on the line 206-337-9049 or sends me an audio .wav or .aiff file via email in the next two weeks is entered to win one of my books (Mystery of Harry Potter, Father Brown Reader, Study Guide to Blue Cross or St. Francis).
Ideas:

"Hi! My name is (fill in blank) and I love the American Chesterton Society."

"Hi! My name is (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on the FaceBook Fan Page."

"Greetings! I'm (X) and I follow the American Chesterton Society on Twitter."

Or--make up your own original and fun greeting!

Deadline: Nov 9 midnight.