The Ball and the Cross

 

There are a number of Chesterton groups around the world. They engage in various activities.

Here in Rochester, N.Y., the local Chesterton Society used to sponsor one of the best annual regional  conferences in the nation. Not as great as the National Conference, certainly, but still very good, drawing all sorts of national speakers, including, of course, Dale Ahlquist and Joseph Pearce. 

Alas, the pool of money that had been set aside for the conferences ran out, so they are no more. 

But the society continues to meet.on a monthly basis most of the year. The members spend those meetings reading and discussing works by Chesterton.

For the past few months we have been reading The Ball and the Cross. We each take parts (including narrator) as we read. Tonight we read Chapters X and XI. 

I've read the book before, but there's something different about hearing it and sharing insights.

Much of he book involves an atheist and a devoutly religious man trying to have a duel - science vs. religion - but facing constant interference from the world. 

Of course it's full of silliness, social commentary, and plenty of vivid descriptions and wordplay.

Chesterton's novels are not his greatest works, but they are still well worth reading.    

The Golden Key - Chesterton Station

 

In a previous post I mentioned Chesterton Station. The show features John Walker as Chesterton, who is at a railway station where he encounters various fellow writers - George Bernard Shaw, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothy Sayers, and more. 

As a Christmas gift I received the first episode, "The Golden Key."

It's actually a two-part episode, with Chesterton arriving in the station, and delivering a long monologue highlighting key events in his life, and his literary, philosophical, and spiritual beliefs.

I watched it and got the sense it may have been intended as just a one-time program ending with, well, his passage into eternal life. But it worked, and maybe that lead to the subsequent episodes featuring him returning to the station to encounter fellow writers. Or maybe the creators did hope for a series when they set out.

Anyway, "The Golden Key" is delightful. As a fan of Chesterton, I found it reminding me of life details and favorite works by him. For my wife, who is not a reader of Chesterton, it was a wonderful introduction to him.

Indeed, I recommend it and the other episodes as a way to introduce Chesterton to a wider audience. 

The episodes are shown on Thursdays at 5 p.m. on EWTN - unless preempted by special programming. 

Chesterton and Resolutions

 

From Aleteia - 

Why G.K. Chesterton approved of New Year’s resolutions

By John Touhey - published on 12/31/24

The date that marks the beginning of the year is admittedly arbitrary, but the hope it represents for us reveals an undeniable truth.

Many people find the idea of New Year’s resolutions to be ridiculous. The date that a “new year” begins is arbitrary after all. (The Babylonians and ancient Romans started their new year in March during the spring equinox.) There is no reason to wait until January to set new goals. And more than 90% of the resolutions we do make will not last through the year.

Most of us realize that we will probably fail; yet we continue to make life-changing resolutions on January 1.

Chesterton on resolutions

For the great G.K. Chesterton that is a good thing – as he explain in the very first entry of 1916’s The G.K. Chesterton Calendar:

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year’s resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. Unless a man starts on the strange assumption that he has never existed before, it is quite certain that he will never exist afterwards. Unless a man be born again, he shall by no means enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Hope and rebirth

In the same calendar’s entry for December 31, Chesterton warns against viewing what comes tomorrow as “clear and inevitable.” If we do so, we will be like those who looked at Medusa and her sisters and were “turned to stone.”

That’s because only hope can make us new people. To accept that tomorrow must be like yesterday and that life will never change is to die inside. Even something as simple as a New Year’s resolution is an acknowledgement that God made us creatures of hope.

“There is one thing that gives radiance to everything,” Chesterton said on another occasion. “It is the idea of something around the corner.”

One resolution you can keep

Chesterton is always surprising us, especially in how he looks at life through the lens of his Christian faith, finding promise and goodness even in the most mundane things. Just imagine what it would be like to go through the Jubilee Year of 2025 with that attitude!

If you do make resolutions this New Year’s Day perhaps one of them could be to read a little more Chesterton — and to try to imitate his openness and positivity when dealing with the world at large.

The Chestertons and Christmas

 

Why was Christmas special to G.K. and Frances Chesterton?
Maria Wiering/OSV News | 12.26.2024Section: Features

ST. PAUL, Minn. (OSV News) — “The hands that made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of cattle,” G.K. Chesterton wrote in “The Everlasting Man.”

He was speaking, of course, of Jesus in the manger. It’s “a line that should be on a Christmas card,” said Dale Ahlquist, president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton. “The whole center of history is when Christ comes to earth, when God becomes a human being. … It’s the Incarnation in a nutshell.”

Devoted fans of Chesterton (1874-1936), a well-known British writer and Catholic convert, marked the 150th anniversary of his birthday in May. He is beloved worldwide for “his great way of turning a phrase,” Ahlquist said. And that’s especially true for his writings about Christmas, which was a special holiday for the writer and his wife, Frances. ... 

To see the rest, use the Features link. Features

For This Year's Christmas Card: Clerihews

 

Every year, I try to include some creative element with my Christmas cards. It varies: Sometimes a story, sometimes a poem, sometimes a collection of poems. This year it's a collection of clerihews about holy people or Biblical characters. A number of the poems have appeared here previously in separate posts, and some have been published in Gilbert. 

Merry Christmas! 

At Nicaea, St. Nicholas
slapped a naughty Arius.
Since then he's found a list does fine
to help keep those who stray in line.

St. Thomas More
wandered into a Denver marijuana store
where he was chagrined by the cornucopia
of products labeled "Utopia."

When he was young St. Polycarp
religiously practiced the harp.
When a musical career proved a non-starter
he instead became a martyr.

Too sick to attend, St. Clare
miraculously saw the service as if there.
Because of that vision
she's now the patron saint of television.

That holy doorman Solanus Casey
was someone whom people flocked to see.
Folks say that his only sin
was the way he played the violin.

In his early life Thomas Merton
was often uncertain.
He ended his consternation
through contemplation.

Lot's wife
ended her life
when she came to a halt
and proved her salt.

After that day in Moriah, young Isaac
developed many a nervous tic,
and was tempted to run for his life
whenever Abraham picked up a knife.

Ezekiel
was full of prophetic zeal.
He was only wrong when it came to bets
on the Jets and the Mets.

St. Francis of Assisi,
joyfully grateful for the Nativity,
created at Greccio a stable display
that’s imitated world-wide to this day.

St. Rose
was plagued by earthly beaus.
To discourage their thoughts of marriage
she used pepper to spice up her visage.

St. Thomas Aquinas
was noted for his reticence and shyness.
But crack open a bottle
and he’d expound at length on Aristotle.

Irascible St. Jerome
was justly noted for his biblical tome,
but he was upset that no one would look
at his vegetarian cookbook.

Methuselah
was one long-lived fella.
It wasn't because longevity was bred in his bones,
he was just determined to pay off all his college loans.

St. Dominic
considered using a sword or a stick,
but found that rosary beads
worked quite well for his demon-battling needs.

The replacement Apostle Matthias
was chosen by lot, not by bias.
Alas, except for his selection.
he's eluded all other historical detection.

We can probably assume Saint Blaise
is in Heaven these days.
Martyrdom likely led him to eternal glory
and not just some fish story.

The prophet Amos
became justly famous
not for his cookie baking skill,
but for proclaiming God's will.

St. Paul,
by modern standards wasn’t tall,
but he did go from guarding the coats
to being one of the Church’s GOATs.

St. Robert Southwell
sat musing for a spell,
then sadly said, “It does seem a shame
Americans don’t properly pronounce my name.”

Chesterton and Mary

 

For this Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a passage from The Well and the Shallows: 

M)en need an image, single, coloured and clear in outline, an image to be called up instantly in the imagination, when what is Catholic is to be distinguished from what claims to be Christian or even what in one sense is Christian. Now I can scarcely remember a time when the image of Our Lady did not stand up in my mind quite definitely, at the mention or the thought of all these things. I was quite distant from these things, and then doubtful about these things; and then disputing with the world for them, and with myself against them; for that is the condition before conversion. But whether the figure was distant, or was dark and mysterious, or was a scandal to my contemporaries, or was a challenge to myself – I never doubted that this figure was the figure of the Faith; that she embodied, as a complete human being still only human, all that this Thing had to say to humanity. The instant I remembered the Catholic Church, I remembered her; when I tried to forget the Catholic Church, I tried to forget her; when I finally saw what was nobler than my fate, the freest and the hardest of all my acts of freedom, it was in front of a gilded and very gaudy little image of her in the port of Brindisi, that I promised the thing that I would do, if I returned to my own land.

Appreciation

 

 “The aim of life is appreciation; There is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.” - G. K. Chesterton 

Today we got our first real snow of the season. I took the dog out into the backyard, and he had a grand time. 

He clearly appreciated the snow!