The Power and the Glory

Today we celebrate the daily miracle where God daily is present in our midst and gives himself to us.

Lord I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the words and I shall be healed.  

While countless theologians have illuminated the topic, it is often most startling to realize the miracle of it taking place in the prosaic everyday.

"...the Mass is very long and tiresome unless one loves God. ...if you are really sorry it is all right. If you are horribly sorry it is all the better. You have only to go and tell the priest so and he will give you God out of his own hands."

I want you to hate me! " cried Turnbull, in agony. "I want you to be sick when you think of my name. I am sure there is no God."

"But there is," said Madeleine, quite quietly, and rather with the air of one telling children about an elephant. "Why, I touched His body only this morning."

"You touched a bit of bread," said Turnbull, biting his knuckles. "Oh, I will say anything that can madden you!"

"You think it is only a bit of bread," said the girl, and her lips tightened ever so little.

"I know it is only a bit of bread," said Turnbull, with violence.

She flung back her open face and smiled. "Then why did you refuse to eat it?" she said

God the Rebel

Christ in majesty, Christ Triumphant, Christ overturning the gates of Hell. These are the image of Easter but they are made all the more powerful by the depiction of Jesus at the end of lent and during Holy Week. Jesus wept, Jesus asked to be sparred, Jesus abandoned by his closest friends. It is these moments of darkness that the power and the glory of God is truly revealed.

That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents for ever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete.

Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point - and does not break.

In this indeed I approach a matter more dark and awful than it is easy to discuss; and I apologise in advance if any of my phrases fall wrong or seem irreverent touching a matter which the greatest saints and thinkers have justly feared to approach. But in that terrific tale of the Passion there is a distinct emotional suggestion that the author of all things (in some unthinkable way) went not only through agony, but through doubt.

It is written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." [Mt 4:7 quoting Dt. 6:16] No; but the Lord thy God may tempt Himself; and it seems as if this was what happened in Gethsemane. In a garden Satan tempted man: and in a garden God tempted God. He passed in some superhuman manner through our human horror of pessimism.

When the world shook and the sun was wiped out of heaven, it was not at the crucifixion, but at the cry from the cross: the cry which confessed that God was forsaken of God. [Mt 27:46 quoting Ps 22:1] And now let the revolutionists choose a creed from all the creeds and a god from all the gods of the world, carefully weighing all the gods of inevitable recurrence and of unalterable power. They will not find another god who has himself been in revolt.

Nay (the matter grows too difficult for human speech), but let the atheists themselves choose a god. They will find only one divinity who ever uttered their isolation; only one religion in which God seemed for an instant to be an atheist. [cf The Everlasting Man CW2:344]

Wise Men

Step softly, under snow or rain,
To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise mert of yore,
And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill,
And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
The Furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly ... it has hailed and snowed ...
With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
(... We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone,...)
The Child that played with moon and sun
Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
The old strange house that is our own,
Where tricks of words are never said.
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly; humble are the skies,
And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
To roar to the resounding plain,
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
Through the snow and rain.

Joseph

If the stars fell; night's nameless dreams
Of bliss and blasphemy came true,
If skies were green and snow were gold,
And you loved me as I love you;

O long light hands and curled brown hair,
And eyes where sits a naked soul;
Dare I even then draw near and burn
My fingers in the aureole?

Yes, in the one wise foolish hour
God gives this strange strength to a man.
He can demand, though not deserve,
Where ask he cannot, seize he can.
But once the blood's wild wedding o'er,
Were not dread his, half dark desire,
To see the Christ-child in the cot,
The Virgin Mary by the fire?

--G. K. Chesterton

Saint George and the Dragon

"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."--G. K. Chesterton 

Pardon me for being late with this post, the feast of St.  George was April 23rd, but it is that point in the semester.  

A few years ago Saint George and a few other saints (including Saint Christopher) were taken off the off the official church calendar because of a lack of historical evidence for their existence, probably prompted by the more fantastic elements in their vitas.  

George's actual life has always been shrouded in mystery.  Pope Gelasius stated that George was among those saints "whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God."  Yet legends about the soldier saint who refused to give up his faith in the face of Diocletian's persecutions and who slayed dragons abounded during the Middle Ages, particularly during the Crusades.  

Which brings me to the Chesterton quote.  While I am inclined to believe that George existed that is not the most important thing to be gained from his life.  What is important, what is more than true, is George's witness.  He is a protector of Christendom, both in his slaying of the dragon and in his giving his life for his faith.  Whether factual or not, George's life remains a witness to Christ and an example to us all--and that makes him worthy of the title saint.  

And at home wherever I blow.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land.  -G.K. Chesterton

Chance or the Dance?

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 ecstasy 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. 

This was my first conviction; made by the shock of my childish emotions meeting the modern creed in mid-career. I had always vaguely felt facts to be miracles in the sense that they are wonderful: now I began to think them miracles in the stricter sense that they were WILFUL. I mean that they were, or might be, repeated exercises of some will. In short, I had always believed that the world involved magic: now I thought that perhaps it involved a magician. And this pointed a profound emotion always present and sub-conscious; that this world of ours has some purpose; and if there is a purpose, there is a person. I had always felt life first as a story: and if there is a story there is a story-teller.

Epiphany and the Past

I don't believe in time.*  Not in the sense of the passing of one second providing a magical break for all the world, especially a moment arbitrarily marked by pagan emperor's centuries ago.  Within the liturgical year there are many moments of new beginnings and times for reflection--the new liturgical year beginning with Advent, Lent which is a time for self reflection and sacrifice, and even Christmas.  Yet these are the opposite of clean breaks and instead invoke the past and the future.  Even Christmas, the celebration of the beginning of Christ's life on earth also invokes His end in the gifts of the kings.  As Chesterton says;

There were three things prefigured and promised by the gifts in the cave in Bethlehem concerning the Child who received them; that He would be crowned like a King; that He should be worshipped like a God; and that He should die like a man. And these things would sound like Eastern flattery, were it not for the third.

Enjolras wrote last New Year about the falseness of new beginnings, how resolutions cannot change your past--and perhaps that is why they usually fail to change the future.  New Year's resolutions foster the myth of advancement, the future must be better because of the unstoppable march of progress and time.  Christianity tells us the opposite, that because of the fall we will never achieve perfection on earth.

This is not meant to be a depressing or defeatist thought.  In fact, the proper response to this realization is to keep working towards peace and a world where everyones right's are protected, dignity is affirmed and basic needs are met, but the knowledge of original sin protects us from despair when this most assuredly does not happen.  But this knowledge that the future will not necessarily be better than the past also reminds us that a checklist of personal self-improvement projects are not enough--we also need reflection, study and knowledge but most of all we need the little baby born in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago.  And this is the lesson Christmas teaches as opposed to New Years, for as Chesterton once again says;

Christmas is an obstacle to modern progress. Rooted in the past, and even the remote past, it cannot assist a world in which the ignorance of history is the only clear evidence of the knowledge of science. Born among miracles reported from two thousand years ago, it cannot expect to impress that sturdy common sense which can withstand the plainest and most palpable evidence for miracles happening at this moment. . . .Christmas is not modern; Christmas is not Marxian; Christmas is not made on the pattern of that great age of the Machine, which promises to the masses an epoch of even greater happiness and prosperity than that to which it has brought the masses at this moment. Christmas is medieval; having arisen in the earlier days of the Roman Empire. Christmas is a superstition. Christmas is a survival of the past.

*This is why this post is a week and a half after New Years and also misses Epiphany and the end of the Christmas season entirely, not because I have been lazy and too unmotivated to write.  

The House of Christmas

Merry Christmas!

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.


--G. K. Chesterton

The Eternal-Or lessons of the League of the long Bow

The sacred and the eternal can be hard to detect in everyday life. And while it need not always be front and center--the little things in life have their place and their own import--it is always important and cannot be ignored. And in a world where technology is constantly increasing the pace, making reflection more rare, recognizing the eternal, the unmovable, the First Things, is essential.

As the members of the League of the Long Bow put it:

"In all our adventures," went on the other, "we have all of us taken up some definite position and stuck to it, however difficult it might be; that was the whole fun of it. But our critics did not stick to their own position --not even to their own conventional or conservative position. . .The modern world is materialistic, but it isn't solid. It isn't hard or stern or ruthless in pursuit of its purpose, or all the things that newspapers and novels say it is; and sometimes actually praise it for being. Materialism isn't like stone; it is like mud, and liquid mud at that."

'There's something in what you say," said Owen Hood, "and I am inclined to add something to it. On a rough reckoning of the chances in Modern England, I should say the situation is something like this. In that dubious and wavering atmosphere it is very unlikely there would ever be a revolution, or any vital reform. But if there were, I believe on my soul that it might be successful. I believe everything else would be too weak and wobbly to stand against it."

Strange Music

Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,  

But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back,  

Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret, 

Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.  

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e'er let fall, 

In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;  

Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,  

Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.  

Not as mine, my soul's annointed, not as mine the rude and light  

Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;  

Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,  

Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.  

But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once,  

Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.  

But I will not fear to match them-no, by God, I will not fear,  

I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear. 

--G. K. Chesterton

I fear the Trojans

"You should not look a gift universe in the mouth." G. K. Chesterton 

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked 
And figs grew upon thorn, 
Some moment when the moon was blood 
Then surely I was born; 

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet. 

--G. K. Chesterton

I will go

Globalization. What is it doing to our world? Is it flattening it, as Thomas Friedman has phrased it? Are all peoples unique and sometimes, frankly ridiculous strands of tread being spun together, to form a color with no meaning, no passion, no life?

There are two main components of culture: language and religion. Together these entities are able to create something magnificently unique within us. They are the two fundamental things which we are taught when we are small. And hopefully, they are something that we will cherish for the eternity of our lives. However, both language and religion are being marred by globalization.

As Robin Hood has pointed out, English has become the world's lingua franca. As such, languages everywhere are dying out. Ethnologue considers 516 languages as nearly extinct. The few older speakers of these languages, who are still living, are not passing on their language to their children. Every time a language crosses the threshold and becomes extinct, we, as people, lose something. I know not what can be done. However, I am puzzled to think of what might happen if we ourselves attempted to preserve a language. A language is considered to be dead when there are no people who speak it as their first language. Therefore, if one was to raise their children speaking a dead language only then, in reality there would be a native speaker, and, as such, the language would no longer be dead. I know that this method of revival would not work for the majority of languages, as it requires, among other things, that the language be written down. I also know that the practicality of doing this is highly debatable. But then again, since when has practicality been a concern of mine.

Religion has also been changed in the face of globalization. It would appear to me that many people are increasingly not believing the beliefs which they proclaim to believe. People are more concerned with the "freedom of religion" than the actual religion which they are a part of. What happened to the time when religion was something to die for?

"MacIan turned upon him with a white face and bitter lip. 'Sir,' he said, 'talk about the principle of love as much as you like. You seem to me colder than a lump of stone; but I am willing to believe that you may at some time have loved a cat, or a dog, or a child. When you were a baby I suppose you loved your mother. Talk about love, then, till the world is sick of the word. But don't you talk about Christianity. Don't you dare say one word, white or black, about it. Christianity is, as far as you are concerned, a horrible mystery. Keep clear of it, keep silent upon it, as you would upon an abomination. It is a thing that has made men slay and torture each other; and you will never know why. It is a thing that has made men do evil so that good may come; and you will never understand the evil, let alone the good. Christianity is a thing that could only make you vomit, till you are other than you are. I would not justify it to you even if I could. Hate it, in God's name, as Turnbull does, who is a man. It is a monstrous thing, for which men die. And if you stand here and talk about love for another ten minutes it is very possible that you will see a man die for it."

I am not advocating that people should kill for religion, (neither was Chesterton) merely that people be willing to die for it. Nor am I claiming that people no longer have faith, that people arenot willing to be martyred. I am, however, advocating that people actually believe.

Ireland

“For the great Gaels of Ireland /Are the men that God made mad, / For all their wars are merry / And all their songs are sad.” --G. K. Chesterton

A Cider Song

Saint Patrick's Day has become for so many people an excuse to get very drunk, often starting at 10 in the morning. While this looses something of the meaning of the feast (or all of it), here is a different view on drinking from the brilliant Chesterton.

The wine they drink in Paradise
They make in Haute Lorraine;
God brought it burning from the sod
To be a sign and signal rod
That they that drink the blood of God
Shall never thirst again.

The wine they praise in Paradise
They make in Ponterey,
The purple wine of Paradise,
But we have better at the price;
It's wine they praise in Paradise,
It's cider that they pray.

The wine they want in Paradise
They find in Plodder's End,
The apple wine of Herford,
Of Hafod Hill and Herford,
Where woods went down to Herford,
And there I had a friend.

The soft feet of the blessed go
In the soft western vales,
The road of the silent saints accord,
The road from heaven to Herford,
Where the apple wood of Herford
Goes all the way to Wales.

One Blaze of Glory

Some sneer, some snigger, some simper; in the youth where we laughed, and sang. And they may end with a whimper But we will end with a bang. -G.K. Chesterton

Freedom

"Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice." -G. K. Chesterton

Child of the Snows

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain,

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

- G.K. Chesterton

The Everlasting Man

For Christmas, here's a quote from one of my favorite passages in G.K. Chesterton's, The Everlasting Man:

Christmas for us in Christendom has become one thing, and in one sense even a simple thing. But like all the truths of that tradition, it is in another sense a very complex thing. Its unique not is the simultaneous striking of many notes; of humility, or gaiety, of gratitude, of mystical fear, but also of vigilance and drama. There is something defiant in it also; something that makes the abrupt bells at midnight sound like the great guns of a battle that has just been won. All this indescribable thing that we call the Christmas atmosphere only hangs in the air as something like a lingering fragrance or fading vapour from the exultant explosion of that one hour in the Judean hills nearly two thousand years ago. But the savour is still unmistakable, and it is something too subtle or too solitary to be covered by our use of the word peace. By the very nature of the story the rejoicings in the cavern were rejoicings in a fortress or an outlaw’s den; properly understood it is not unduly flippant to say they were rejoicings in a dug-out. It is not only true that such a subterranean chamber was a hiding-place from enemies; and that the enemies were already scouring the stony plain that lay above it like a sky.

There is in this buried divinity an idea of undermining the world; of shaking the towers and palaces from below; even as Herod the great king felt that earthquake under him and swayed with his swaying palace. This is perhaps the mightiest of the mysteries of the cave. Indeed the Church from its beginnings, and perhaps especially in its beginnings, was not so much a principality as a revolution against the prince of the world. It was in truth against a huge unconscious usurpation that it raised a revolt. Olympus still occupied the sky like a motionless cloud moulded into many mighty forms; philosophy still sat in the high places and even on the thrones of the kings, when Christ was born in the cave and Christianity in the catacombs.