A Pumpkin Chesterton

A couple of my friends and I attempted a Chesterton pumpkin this Halloween, and I discovered that my memory for faces is not very good. Luckily, my friends were better, and our attempt turned out better than this rather fuzzy picture can show.

Progress on The Everlasting Man

I finished the first part of The Everlasting Man, but I've been listening to the audio book so it is much harder to record quotes. However if you are interested in quotes go to Studeo and search for "The Everlasting Man" and "The God in the Cave", I promise you will not be short on reading material.

ChesterTeens Sweatshirt

I am planning to make my new sweatshirt into a ChesterTeens sweatshirt using iron-ons. And I was thinking it would be cool if the ChesterTeens each made one. I will post the design once I've made it but before that I need help designing it.

I was thinking "Proud to be a ChesterTeen" on the front and a quote on the back, but what quote? And should the front be different? Please comment what you think. I need help.

"The Man Who Was Thursday" Discussion, Post 2

Finally we have our next topic to discussion. Thanks to Dr. Thursday for coming up with another topic.

How does TMWWT fit into the Tolkien view of subcreation?
Side question for speculation: Do the Two Trees of Valinor have their seed in this dialogue?

What do you think???? PLEASE comment.

Black and White, Yes and no....

Today I was reading a chapter of Sidelights by G.K.C. The chapter was "Magic and Fantasy in Fiction." (It's at the very end of volume XXI of the Collected works). The last paragraph seemed very interesting and worthy of discussion on this blog. So please comment with your thoughts. And while you're at it, any ideas for Man Who Was Thursday Discussion topic? Anyways here's the quote:

After all it is perhaps no matter of surprise that Bishop Barnes of
Birmingham should see a link between the Magician and the Mass. There is a sort of logical link between them; the logical link that connects Yes and No. In other words, they are exact contraries; like light and darkness, which are often classed together because they are often mentioned at once. They cross each other with the complete collision and contradiction that belongs to "The Two Magics." The Magician is the Man when he seeks to become God, and, being a usurper, can hardly fail to be a tyrant. Not being the maker, but only the distorter, he twists all things out of their intended shape, and imprisons natural things in unnatural forms. But the Mass is exactly the opposite of a Man seeking to be a God. It is a God seeking to be a Man; it is God giving His creative life to mankind as such, and restoring the original pattern of their manhood; making not gods, nor beasts, nor angels; but, by the original blast and miracle that makes
all things new, turning men into men.

Another Chesterword

Thanks to Cottage Blessings we have been making tons of puppets with little craft spoons. Anyone who knows me very well could probably guess that I would make one of Chesterton. My four-year old sister Kate made many, Bob, Bobby, Bob the builder and then Chesterton!
Last night, when she was trying to say Chesterton, a slip of the tounge caused her to say Chesterpin and so she coined the term for what you see on the side of this post.

Update I aded my own Chesterpin.

Astonishing yet obvious discovery

I'm doing a reaserch paper on Chaucer, and I've been reading Chesterton's biography of him , searching for facts to fill notecards. Needless to say, I've learned the hard way what reason must have pointed out, had I thought about it: paraphrasing Chesterton is the most tragic, painful thing I have ever tried to do. Also, full of truth as his books are, mining for just the solid, bland facts is basically impossible in a volume of Chesterton. I've been working a long time, and have only one fact, albeit a good one: Chaucer was Catholic.

Phantom Tollbooth Discussion

On friday night we had a wonderful discussion on the Phantom Tollbooth with, Gilbert Girl, Margaret, Rose, Mari, Cathy, their mom, D'Maire, my mom and Gus.
We started off with "the point of view" in which Milo, Tock and the Humbug become acquanted with Alec Bings. We discussed the way in which Alec Bings always looks at the future and not the present. And so he is always running into trees. We also talked about how much Milo's point of view differs from that of Alec Bings and which of them serves that person better. We decided that Milo's is probably more practical if nothing else, but that even aside from that it does serve him better. This led into the, as we named him, "the most ordinary man in the world". He is the one who pretends to be the giant, the midget, the thin man and the fat man. And after asking him the same question at all of his four doors, Milo says" I think you're all the same man" and the man explains:

... to tall men I'm a midget, and to short men I'm a giant;
to the skinny ones I'm a fat man and to the fat ones I'm a thin man. That
way I can hold four jobs at once. As you can see, though, I'm neither tall nor
short nor fat nor thin. In fact, I'm quite ordinary, but since there are so many
ordinary men that no one asks their opinion about anything.

So the forest of sight kept us busy for quite a while since we also discussed, if only briefly, Reality, Illusions and the 'Colorful Symphony'. Margaret explained why she liked the colorful symphony and what she said was really interesting but I can't remember what her remarks were, maybe she can help me?

So next stop was Dictionopolis (we weren't going in very good order) we talked about the banquet, the half- baked- idea pastries made an interesting topic, we talked about what they were and how we liked that they got sick after eating them. Then somebody asked why the two princesses were so important, then someone else said she was wondering why Princess Rhyme was so important, she could understand why Princess Reason was important but Princess Rhyme didn't make as much sense. So that made a VERY interesting topic as you may imagine. GilbertGirl and I, the most talkitive of our group, found it 'necessary' to cover each other's mouths so that the other girls would have to talk too (it was REALLY funny). And Rose, asked her neighbor "Do you understand Reason at all?" of course she ment Princess Reason but the way it came out didn't work so well. That sent us all into fits of laughter.

But it was interesting too. GilbertGirl pointed out that in a poem, rhyme is what keeps it all together (if you know what I mean) and so that was an important part to play. And I said that in the book they describe Rhyme as a more light-hearted princess so that might be an important part to play to keep reason from being to dull. It seems to me that we got into more than that but I can't remember, does anyone else? If so please post or comment.

Next stop, The Island of Conclusions. We didn't talk a whole lot about this but mainly the trip back, how it is possible to 'swim all day in the sea of knowledge and still come out completely dry'. Which many people had not noticed the significance of. You see when you are exposed to knowledge you can either learn it and get wet or be completely oblivious to it and stay completely dry, and that is what the Humbug, not surprisingly, experienced.

When it came to our notice that we were running short on time, we decided that we had to get to the demons. But I can't remember much of that, can someone else fill me in please?

Then we ended with our favorite parts. Not all of us (me included) had a single favorite part but here some people did and they included:

This was one that my mom (and I) found interesting (Describing the package Milo
found in his room) For while it was not quite square it was definitly not round, and for it's size it was larger than almost any other big package of smaller dimensions he'd ever seen.

Mari's favorite was: You must never feel badly for making mistakes, as long as you take the trouble to learn from them. For you often learn more from being wrong for the right reason then for being right for the wrong reasons.

So that concluded our discussion but I would gladly welcome any more thoughts on this book. Speaking of discussions, I am planning to do the next TMWWT discussion but I'm not having any bright ideas, does anyone else have suggestions?

Emmeth

Whenever I listen to the Last Battle I am reminded not only fo how much I love it but of what an interesting character Emmeth is. For those of you who don't know Emmeth is a young man who comes from Calormen (which usually isn't a good thing) and so of course he believed in the Calormen god, Tash. Now it would be a very long story to tell he got there so I will just say he met Aslan while wandering in the 'Inner Narnia'. He was quite understandably terrified (although he was not sorry to have seen the lion), for he thought that since he had served Tash his whole life rather than this lion who was " Worthy of all honor", the lion would be angry with him. But he was wrong, Aslan kissed him and said,Son thou art welcome Emmeth replied Alas, Lord, I am no son of thine but a servant of Tash Aslan said that he took to him all the services that Emmeth had done to Tash for this reason. For he and I are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me and no service which is not vile can be done to him. Emmeth said that he had been seeking Tash all his days and so did not quite understand. Aslan said Beloved, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.
So Emmeth concludes, And my joy is so great that it even weakens me like a wound. And this is the marvel of marvels, that he called me beloved, me who am but as a dog.

So what are your thoughts on that????? Please comment I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Another Prayer Request

Thomas Aquinas college has been evacuated due to fire hazard, please pray for everyone involved. My mom has more complete coverage here.

A Tremendous Trifle

We received the September issue of St. Joseph Messenger today. The first notice for its annual writing contest was published in this issue. On the announcement page they always have a quote on writing, the author varies. And this time it was.... (Well you ought to be able to guess, after all this is ChesterTeens) .... G.K. Chesterton! The quote was:

The aim of good prose words is to mean what they say. The
aim of good poetical words is to mean what they do not say.

And I have just learned a new Chesterton quote, another favorite (I have so many favorites).

Note: If you are interested in the contest you can find the rules here( it's on pg. 12) if you move all the dates up 3 years, it will be exactly as it is in the newest issue, e.g. January 31 2004 should be January 31 2007.

In which I finally introduce myself.

Age: seventeen

Gender: girl

Interests: music, botany, books, many other sundry things which escape my memory at the moment. Oh, yes, and lest you have not deduced it, Chesterton.

Introduced to Chesterton: probably by reading Regina Doman's Shadow of the Bear (someday we'll have to let her know how influential that book seemed to be), a book recommended to me by Ria's mom. My interest was aroused, and I searched our house for anything by him. I happened upon Father Brown, and ... I guess that was that.

Other stuff you may want know: I go by Margaret right now, because I haven't thought of anything better, but I'm trying to think up something different because of how many people around the blogosphere go by just Margaret, so don't be alarmed when I change my name. Also, I don't have the time to read much extra right now, so I don't know how often I'll be able to post or comment. But I'll do my best. Perhaps things will be better once the school year progresses some...

A new way to read Chesterton this is!!!!

Please read this How to Read Chesterton post, it's hilarious.

Hat-tip: Dr. Thursday

The Third Man

The Gilbert Magazine came yesterday! and today I read a very interesting article, The Third Man. The 'third man' was Maurice Baring, a close friend of GKC. The reason he is called the third man is because of a painting of three men. Two of them are easily recognized as Hillaire Belloc and GKC, but the third is less easily recognized, he is, as you probably guessed, Maurice Baring. He was, like Chesterton, a Catholic convert but he converted 13 years earlier, in 1909. When Chesterton converted in 1922 Maurice Baring sent him a letter of which there is an excerpt in the Gilbert Magazine and I will give you an excerpt of that excerpt:

I have hardly ever entered a church without putting up a candle to Our lady or to St. Joseph or St. Anthony for you, And both this year and last year in Lent I made a Novena for you. I know of many other people, better people far than I, who did the same. Many Masses were said for you and prayers all over England and Scotland in centres of Holiness. I will show you some day a letter from some Nuns on the subject. A great friend of mine one of the greatest saints I have known, Sister Mary Annuncitiation of the Convent Orphanage, [would] always pray for you.

Isn't that neat? And here is another interesting quote from the same source.

People used to conceal their ignorance decently. No longer. This is due to the spread of what is called Education. More people are taught things, but they are taught less. In fact, they are taught hardly anything;in former times they were taught little, but that little they learnt.

Well that's all for now, but I will hopefully be posting on the Gilbert magazine this week, but I can't be sure, school is starting soon and I am going to be busy.

The Man Who Was Thursday Discussion 1

A discussion on the Man Who Was Thursday was discovered by Lewis the editor here. But sadly it was closed. Therefore I am going to start one here.

Now the only topic for discussion I could think of was the last chapter, so this is my question:

Was Syme's adventure all a dream, or did it only seem like a dream, or does it matter?

Any thoughts, answers or additions to the question??? Please comment.
Oh, and any ideas for the next topic?????