Maybe Somebody Should Have Put Baby In A Corner

A Grace
by G. K. Chesterton

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the play and the opera,
And grace before the concert and pantomime,
And grace before I open a book,
And grace before sketching, painting,
Swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing;
And grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Chesterton apparently had nothing against dancing per se, especially when it is part of celebrating. It is a natural human expression of joy and worship.

We see dancing in the context of worship and celebrating in the Bible as well. ("Let them praise His name with dancing; let them sing praises to Him with timbrel and lyre." - Psalm 49: 3 and "A time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance." Ecclesiastes 3: 4 to cite two examples.)

And don't forget Snoopy's joyful dance!

But, of course, dancing has its limits, especially when it strays from celebration - such as David before the Ark - to sensuality - as with Salome before Herod.

Indeed, dance in Western civilizations too often strays into the realm of sensual and erotic. That is why the Catholic Church prohibits it in Masses (except when the Mass is for a cultural group that has dance as part of its worship):

" Here dancing is tied with love, with diversion, with profaneness, with unbridling of the senses. . . . For that reason it cannot be introduced into liturgical celebrations of any kind whatever: That would be to inject into the liturgy one of the most desacralized and desacralizing elements, and so it would be equivalent to creating an atmosphere of profaneness which would easily recall to those present and to the participants in the celebration worldly places and situations." - Congregation for the Sacraments and Divine Worship, Dance in the Liturgy (1975)

One Saint who clearly did not like dance was St. Jean Vianney, The Cure of Ars. In the collection of his sermons (The Sermons of the Cure of Ars, translated by Una Morrissy), he decried dancing again and again.

Is there any place, any time, any occasion wherein so many sins of impurity are committed at the dancehalls and their sequels? Is it not in these gatherings that people are most violently prompted against the holy virtue of purity? Where else but there are the senses so strongly urged towards pleasurable excitement? If we go a little more closely into this, should we not almost die of horror at the sight of so many crimes which are committed? Is it not at these gatherings that the Devil so furiously kindles the fire of impurity in the hearts of the young people in order to annihilate in them the grace of Baptism? Is it not there that Hell enslaves as many souls as it wishes? If, in spite of the absence of occasions and the aids of prayer, a Christian has so much difficulty in preserving purity of heart, how could he possibly preserve that virtue in the midst of so many sources which are capable of breaking it down?

Did the Holy Fathers of the Church say too much about it? St. Ephraim tells us that dancing is the perdition of girls and women, the blinding of men, the grief of angels, and the joy of the devils. Dear God, can anyone really have their eyes bewitched to such an extent that they will still want to believe that there is no harm in it, while all the time it is the rope by which the Devil pulls the most souls into Hell?

St. Augustine tells us that those who go to dances truly renounce Jesus Christ in order to give themselves to the Devil.

And he says even more. Yikes.

We do need to be aware of the context of his condemnation. When he was stationed in Ars, the parish had been without a priest for a while. The population had seriously lapsed when it came to church teachings and practices, and to morality. So he was trying to shock them to break them of bad - and sinful - habits. Dancing was in some ways an entry-level activity for some of those habits.

Now it is true that there are forms of dance that do indeed cross the line. And they may indeed lead into sin. (Why did they call that movie Dirty Dancing?)

Personally, I think, like Chesterton, that dancing can be a good thing in the right forms and the right circumstances. I like that in the poem he calls for saying grace before dancing.

On the other hand, he did advise us not to dismiss the wisdom of the saints: "It is better to speak wisdom foolishly like the saints than to speak folly wisely like the deans."

St. John did have a point. And we know how foolish deans can be.

Speaking of foolishness, reading his sermons did inspire a clerihew (of course).

St. Jean Vianney
went to the hootenanny
but left in horror when he happened to glance
some people starting to dance.

On Vacation, So Quotations!

I'm on vacation this week, with wife and dog at a cottage as a base from which to venture forth to see the sights. So just a few quotations from Gilbert!

"The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see."

"An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered."

"They say travel broadens the mind, but you must have the mind."

"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."

What Tolkien Can Teach Us About the Creative Life

 

"Beyond his much-beloved books, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien was a poet, philologist, translator, and inventor of languages. His letters, collected in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, are particularly illuminating, as they offer a glimpse of Tolkien as a writer—one who was often in need of precious, uninterrupted time to write. And though few of these letters are directed to other writers about writing, they reveal some important truths about the craft."  

Thus begins an article by Lindsey Weishar over at Word on Fire. 

She goes on to note: 

"For those of us who write, Tolkien offers a realistic approach to the writing life. Very few of us will be completely free to write as much as we wish. We have families who need us, day jobs to attend to, and obligations to ourselves and others that come with living life. There is beauty in picking up our joys (be that writing or another form of creativity) in the odd hours; so too, there is beauty in the call to the sometimes sacrifice of pouring ourselves out in other ways. Indeed, perhaps that is what makes works like Tolkien’s so rich: The stories lived in him so long and accompanied him throughout his life."

She further says:

"Though writing is often a solitary art, Tolkien’s life demonstrates that our ideas can come to full fruition only when we allow others to enter into them. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings appeared before the Inklings, and Tolkien speaks of the debt of gratitude he owed to C. S. Lewis for his encouragement. The Hobbit became a long-form story Tolkien told his children, and he relied on his children, and the son of his publisher, Rayner Unwin, then a young boy, to offer their feedback on The Hobbit. During World War II, he sent parts of Lord of the Rings to his son, Christopher Tolkien, both to comfort Christopher and because Tolkien valued his opinion."

The rest of the article is a good read - especially for those who would be writers!

Saint Tolkien

 

August 8, 2025

Perhaps I may say also now (as I have meant to do for some time) that though I only briefly thanked Austin [one of the correspondents] for his booklet on the Rosary (I hope I did!), I have now had it by me for a long time, and have derived profit and encouragement from it. I was late in finding the Rosary, and it has been in addition a great delight to know that others whose virtue and learning is far above mine are companions. I began to use it only after hearing Knox [Mgr. Ronald Knox, Tolkien’s chaplain at Oxford] (on a private occasion) say: ‘Personally I do not like the Rosary, but I have a suspicion that Our Lady does.’ Very Knox. But obedience to one’s Mother is only a beginning! It can be greatly rewarded.

J.R.R. Tolkien (letter 242a)

Over on Substack - which seems to a growing place for online writing, including blogs - there is a site called Saint Tolkien run by Kaleb Hammond. He describes himself as:  I am a Roman Catholic, an aspiring writer of both fiction and nonfiction and a graduate student at Holy Apostles College & Seminary pursuing an MA in Theology. My special topics of interest are St. Thomas Aquinas and J.R.R. Tolkien.

He offers a Tolkien Quote of the Day, and a Saint Tolkien Weekly Roundup in which he links to Tolkien-related posts by others, as well as links to other posts of interest to fans of the Inklings and Tolkien. 

August 7, 2025 

I shall miss you v. much at Christmas, though I know it cannot be helped. But I am cheered by the thought that I shall see you again before 1956 is very old. You know that I shall be thinking of you with love, and I know the same of you. I am not attempting to send any Christmas present, since I think it would be much nicer to find something when you are here. I enclose a cheque for £1, in the hope that you may find a chance to say two masses for me. One I should particularly like you to say, for my mother Mabel Tolkien; the other a mass in honour of Our Lady in thanksgiving, you could ‘send back’, if you are (as may well be) overburdened.

J.R.R. Tolkien (letter 179a, to his son, Fr. John, who could rarely come home for Christmas due to the busy parish season)