I'm Reading...

Common Sense 101 by Dale Alquhist. (I have an autographed copy. Tuea Huea!)

And I was wondering...

He says that we need both politics and religion. Well, for those of us who find politics boring and religion fascinating, ought we try to like politics, or at least be good at talking about it?

In other words, Should I be worried about this:

There once was a blogger named Evan
Who thought politics wasn't heaven
And when he died,
His soul was fried.

Or this:

There once was a liberal, old fashioned
Who engaged in politics-bashin'
Such an ingnoring
Set his brain snoring.

More from Orthodoxy

It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything--even pride.

A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert--himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt--the Divine Reason.

The old humility was a spur that prevented a man from stopping;not a nail in his boot that prevented him from going on.

Reason is itself a matter of faith. It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.

There is a thought that stops thought. That is the only thought that ought to be stopped. That is the ultimate evil against which all religious authority was aimed. It only appears at the end of decadent ages like our own: and alreadyMr. H.G.Wells has raised its ruinous banner; he has written a delicate piece of scepticism called "Doubts of the Instrument."In this he questions the brain itself, and endeavours to remove all reality from all his own assertions, past, present, and to come. But it was against this remote ruin that all the military systems in religion were originally ranked and ruled. The creeds and the crusades, the hierarchies and the horrible persecutions were not organized, as is ignorantly said, for the suppression of reason. They were organized for the difficult defence of reason. Man, by a blind instinct, knew that if once things were wildly questioned, reason could be questioned first. The authority of priests to absolve, the authority of popes to define the authority, even of inquisitors to terrify: these were all only dark defences erected round one central authority, more undemonstrable, more supernatural than all--the authority of a man to think. We know now that this is so;we have no excuse for not knowing it. For we can hear scepticism crashing through the old ring of authorities, and at the same moment we can see reason swaying upon her throne. In so far as religion is gone, reason is going. For they are both of the same primary and authoritative kind. They are both methods of proof which cannot themselves be proved. And in the act of destroying the idea of Divine authority we have largely destroyed the idea of that human authority by which we do a long-division sum. With a long and sustained tug we have attempted to pull the mitre off pontifical man; and his head has come off with it.

I'm Reading Orthodoxy

Buddhism is centripetal, but Christianity is centrifugal: it breaks out. For the circle is perfect and infinite in its nature: but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller. But the cross, though it has at its heart a collision and contradiction, can extend its four arms forever without altering its shape. Because it has paradox in its centre it can grow without changing. The circle returns upon itself and is bound. The cross opens its four arms to the winds; it is a signpost for free travelers.

(Chap. 2: The Maniac, Orthodoxy)

Poetry FRIDAY! An Exerpt from The Ballad of the White Horse

From Book Four (I copied it from here again):

"And well may God with the serving-folk
Cast in His dreadful lot;
Is not He too a servant,
And is not He forgot ?

"For was not God my gardener
And silent like a slave;
That opened oaks on the uplands
Or thicket in graveyard gave? "

And was not God my armourer,
All patient and unpaid,
That sealed my skull as a helmet,
And ribs for hauberk made? "

Did not a great grey servant
Of all my sires and me,
Build this pavilion of the pines,
And herd the fowls and fill the vines,
And labour and pass and leave no signs
Save mercy and mystery?

"For God is a great servant,
And rose before the day,
From some primordial slumber torn;
But all we living later born
Sleep on, and rise after the morn,
And the Lord has gone away.

"On things half sprung from sleeping,
All sleepy suns have shone,
They stretch stiff arms, the yawning trees,
The beasts blink upon hands and knees,
Man is awake and does and sees--
But Heaven has done and gone.

For who shall guess the good riddle
Or speak of the Holiest,
Save in faint figures and failing words,
Who loves, yet laughs among the swords,
Labours, and is at rest?

"But some see God like Guthrum,
Crowned, with a great beard curled,
But I see God like a good giant,
That, labouring, lifts the world.

"Wherefore was God in Golgotha,
Slain as a serf is slain;
And hate He had of prince and peer,
And love He had and made good cheer,
Of them that, like this woman here,
Go powerfully in pain.

"But in this grey morn of man's life,
Cometh sometime to the mind
A little light that leaps and flies,
Like a star blown on the wind.

"A star of nowhere, a nameless star,
A light that spins and swirls,
And cries that even in hedge and hill,
Even on earth, it may go ill
At last with the evil earls.

"A dancing sparkle, a doubtful star,
On the waste wind whirled and driven;
But it seems to sing of a wilder worth,
A time discrowned of doom and birth,
And the kingdom of the poor on earth
Come, as it is in heaven.

"But even though such days endure,
How shall it profit her?
Who shall go groaning to the grave,
With many a meek and mighty slave,
Field-breaker and fisher on the wave,
And woodman and waggoner.

"Bake ye the big world all again
A cake with kinder leaven;
Yet these are sorry evermore--
Unless there be a little door,
A little door in heaven."

snippets and questions

I just finished The Flying Inn--about ten minutes ago, in fact--and I thought I'd post a few parts I liked.
1) (on a man regarding a landscape): "On a second study, he was not sure it was so inhuman. Rather he felt that its beauty at least was half human; that the aureole of the sinking moon behind the woods was chiefly lovely because it was like the tender-coloured aureole of an early saint; and that the young trees were, after all, noble because they held up their heads like virgins. Cloudily there crowded into his mind ideas with which it was imperfectly familiar, especially an idea which he had heard called "The Image of God." It seemed to him more and more that all these things, from the donkey to the very docks and ferns by the roadside, were dignified and sanctified by their partial resemblance to something else. It was as if they were baby drawings: the wild, crude sketches of Nature in her first sketchbooks of stone."
2) "It flung faintly across the broad foliage a wan and pearly light far more mysterious than the lost moonshine. It seemed to enter through all the doors and windows of the woodland, pale and silent but confident, like men that keep a tryst; soon its white robes had threads of gold and scarlet: and the name of it was morning."
3) "The finding and fighting of positive evil is the beginning of all fun..."

There are, of course, a great deal of other parts that I liked but to post them all would be exceedingly impractical ^_^

I would like to know, though, has anyone else read The Flying Inn? If so, I'd love to hear what you think of it--and how you interpret it. Especially the ending, since I didn't really understand it.

I also read Manalive right before I read the Flying Inn, and I would definitely recommend it; I'll probably post more about it later...

The Shadow of the Bear

Furor asked about The Shadow of the Bear, so I am going to try to summarize it, but if anyone has more to add please do.

The story is centered around two teenage girls, Rose and Blanche Brier, and their widowed mother who recently moved to New York city. One stormy winter evening a strange visitor comes to their door. They make friends with this mysterious young man who calls himself Bear, and over the course of the winter they have many visits consisting largely of long talks. They are all well-read and particularly enjoy G. K. Chesterton who often comes into conversation.
Bear does not say much about himself except that he was in Juvenile detention for drug possession and that he is into the same kind of books as the girls such as Chesterton and Shakespeare. Then in the spring Bear's visits become less frequent and finally cease. Rose, aided by Blanche, after hearing more and more stories about Bear's past, is determined to find out about him, and to prove that Bear was not involved in drugs. However these things are not always safe, as the girls are soon to learn, in fact in the adventure that ensues the girls' lives, as well as those of Bear and his brother, are at stake.

There, that's the best I can do, not very good, but you can learn more about it here (the author's website) and here ( a review by Bethlehem Books, the publisher.) Also I hope that we will get at least one alternate review on here. There is also an audio drama which you can listen to samples of and purchase here.