Paragraphs That Change Lives

Our dear Irish Chestertonian, Mr. O Ceallaigh, has just posted an article which reflects on a very Chestertonian paragraph that’s changed his life.  He has no fear whatsoever of me stealing his thunder, so I thought I would join him and share one paragraph that, upon reading it, I would never be the same.

What I reproduce below is from The Everlasting Man in the chapter titled “The God in the Cave.”  I was still a teenager and an agnostic with some issues to work out that most people have in their late teenage years.  I had already encountered Chesterton in his books Orthodoxy, Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox, and St Francis of Assisi so I was happy to receive this new book for Christmas.  Reading The Everlasting Man was an odd adventure wherein you had to dive through time with Mr. Chesterton and explore the wonder with which any pagan or child could approach time.  I am also embarrassed to say that it was in his book that I caught my first glimpse of the Incarnation.  I’m embarrassed to say this for the simple reason that I had grown up an Evangelical and was well aware that Christ was both God and man, but I did not know just how strange, nay controversial, this belief was.  Hearing Chesterton recapitulation of the Incarnation as the central event of history changed me in ways I am still not understanding.  This idea is still changing me and I believe that my clinical depression was greatly eased by the idea of God becoming man.  Without further ado, I present the passage with emphasis added by yours truly.

This sketch of the human story began in a cave; the cave which popular science associates with the cave-man and in which practical discovery has really found archaic drawings of animals. The second half of human history, which was like a new creation of the world, also begins in a cave. There is even a shadow of such a fancy in the fact that animals were again present; for it was a cave used as a stable by the mountaineers of the uplands about Bethlehem; who still drive their cattle into such holes and caverns at night. It was here that a homeless couple had crept underground with the cattle when the doors of the crowded caravanserai had been shut in their faces; and it was here beneath the very feet of the passersby, in a cellar under the very floor of the world, that Jesus Christ was born But in that second creation there was indeed something symbolical in the roots of the primeval rock or the horns of the prehistoric herd. God also was a CaveMan, and, had also traced strange shapes of creatures, curiously colored upon the wall of the world ; but the pictures that he made had come to life.

A mass of legend and literature, which increases and will never end has repeated and rung the changes on that single paradox; that the hands that had made the sun and stars were too small to reach the huge heads of the cattle. Upon this paradox, we might almost say upon this jest, all the literature of our faith is founded. It is at least like a jest in this; that it is something which the scientific critic cannot see. He laboriously explains the difficulty which we have always defiantly and almost derisively exaggerated; and mildly condemns as improbable something that we have almost madly exalted as incredible; as something that would be much too good to be true, except that it is true. When that contrast between the cosmic creation and the little local infancy has been repeated, reiterated, underlined, emphasized, exulted in, sung, shouted, roared, not to say howled, in a hundred thousand hymns, carols, rhymes, rituals pictures, poems, and popular sermons, it may be suggested that we hardly need a higher critic to draw our attention to something a little odd about it; especially one of the sort that seems to take a long time to see a joke, even his own joke. But about this contrast and combination of ideas one thing may be said here, because it is relevant to the whole thesis of this book. The sort of modern critic of whom I speak is generally much impressed with the importance of education in life and the importance of psychology in education. That sort of man is never tired of telling us that first impressions fix character by the law of causation; and he will become quite nervous if a child’s visual sense is poisoned by the wrong colors on a golliwog or his nervous system prematurely shaken by a cacophonous rattle. Yet he will think us very narrow-minded, if we say that this is exactly why there really is a difference between being brought up as a Christian and being brought up as a Jew or a Moslem or an atheist. T he difference is that every Catholic child has learned from pictures, and even every Protestant child from stones, this incredible combination of contrasted ideas as one of the very first impressions on his mind. It is not merely a theological difference. It is a psychological difference which can outlast any theologies It really is, as that sort of scientist loves to say about anything, incurable. Any agnostic or atheist whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards, whether be likes it or not, an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them, when his reason can no longer see the need of the connection; for him there will always be some savor of religion about the mere picture of a mother and a baby; some hint of mercy and softening about the mere mention of the dreadful name of God. But the two ideas are not naturally or necessarily combined. They would not be necessarily combined for an ancient Greek or a Chinaman, even for Aristotle or Confucius. It is no more inevitable to connect God with an infant than to connect gravitation with a kitten. It has been created in our minds by Christmas because we are Christians; because we are psychological Christians even when we are not theological ones. In other words, this combination of ideas has emphatically, in the much disputed phrase, altered human nature. There is really a difference between the man who knows it and the man who does not. It may not be a difference of moral worth, for the Moslem or the Jew might be worthier according to his lights; but it is a plain fact about the crossing of two particular lights, the conjunction of two stars in our particular horoscope. Omnipotence and impotence, or divinity and infancy, do definitely make a sort of epigram which a million repetitions cannot turn into a platitude. It is not unreasonable to call it unique.

McInerny: ChesterBelloc

Carl at Ignatius Insight posts a wonderful article by the late Ralph McInerny on Chesterton and Belloc.  Well worth the read (as is everything I post on here).

It will of course be said that neither Belloc nor Chesterton had time to agonize over any particular work. They wrote under financial pressure or to make deadlines and had to get the thing done. That makes the high quality of most of their work all the more impressive. But it is the sheer fun the two seemed to have had in doing most of what they did that characterizes them. Try and imagine either Belloc or Chesterton with writer’s block or talking about the agony of creation.

In Honor of Doppelganger Week.

I have been told there is some resemblance.  You tell me.

Mr. Lichens and Mr Chesterton

In Memoriam: Ralph McInerny

God grant eternal rest to Dr. Raph McInerny, a professor of philosophy at Notre Dame who was an avid reader of Chesterton, calling him “an author in love with the English language.”  Indeed, he taught me to reread both Thomas Aquinas and Chesterton.  Much could be said of him, but Fr. James V Schall has a much better article here about the life and legacy of this wise man.  

McInerny introduced many of us to Aquinas. Not that we had not read him before, but McInerny gave us the greater view. I still recall the sudden realization that I had on reading something in McInerny about how philosophy and revelation are related. There were things in revelation that could also be known by reason, a fact that suggested the sources of reason and revelation knew each other

Thomas More, Part II

Fellow Irish-Prussian blogger and Thomas More lover Der Wolfanwalt has posted a rather fun picture based on my post on the good St. Thomas More.  For the heck of it, I publish the picture below, without his permission as that is what a good interlocutor does.

Image from Hoi Logoi

Please read Herr Wolfanwalt’s pice here.

Oh, and for all of you looking for gossip on TMC, I direct you here.

From The Archives

The Guardian brought from their archives a nice little piece on Tobagganing with this last line:

There was one missing master hand. Mr. G. K. Chesterton was not there. Perhaps, however, he toboggans elsewhere. Perhaps he toboggans in a world of upside-down where all the other folk toboggan on their heads, and he alone toboggans sitting down, to make a paradox.

Full article here.

Irish [Chestertonian] Impressions

I think it is time for me to fully endorse a website I have been neglecting for far too long.  The Irish Chestertonian is a wonderful little blog full of great insights and posts of wonder by the Dublin author and University Library worker Maolsheachlann O Ceallaigh.  As someone who is both a Chestertonian and of Irish heritage on my mothers side (though I’ve been accused of being a Plastic Paddy by more than a few), I fell in love with the blog from the moment it popped up on my Google Reader.  All in all, it is a fantastic place to visit and kill a few hours while.

Mr. O Cellaigh is also hoping that this blog will be a launching pad for an Irish Chesterton Society.  Given that he’s only separated by a small body of water from several enviable societies, I’m sure it could be one fun time.  Lord help me if I can’t make such a meeting on my next trip to Dublin.

Fr Enesto: The Imperfect Lady, Our Church

Fr Ernesto writes a letter in the style of GKC on the importance of the Church, despite some her flaws.  Always promises to be a fun one!

She is imperfect, and at times hard to see, but she is there. It is much harder to submit to an imperfect Mother Church and to receive from her, especially when there are some bodies that are better than Mother Church at following the evangelical counsels of the Church.

Click here for the full post.

UPDATE: In my previous post, I suggested that Fr. Ernesto was defending the Roman Catholic Church.  Pardon me, he is clearly an Orthodox priest (and  well read one at that!) and the error was purely a typo on my part.  Mea Culpa!

Chesterton Rules, Even For the Non-Relgious-Spritual-GenerousOrthodox Types

Dave Schmelzer over at the oddly named blog Not The Religious Type has posted what looks to be his igniting spark of a discussion on why G.K. Chesterton is so important.  What I am able to gather from this (what I’m presuming to be) beginning piece of a discussion is the claim that Chesterton is important because he has an ability to pierce into the truths of faith from all kinds of angles.  If this is so, I must admit full agreement with Mr. Schmeltzer!  However, I will await further discussion of what is to come from his intriguing blog.

I know from my own reading, which is extinsive but woefully still lacking, that the mind of Chesterton is something that can be both on the inside and the outside of an issue.  This was why he was such a beloved interlocutor to figures such as Shaw, Russell, and other Edwardian intellects; Chesterton could bring his sizable mind (quite larger than his physical girth) to any discussion and know all points of argument so well that he could even recapitulate his opponets argument with his usual wit and sincerity.  If I can also add, Chesterton stands as a figure of charity in an age where idealogical differences keep many from being friends.

Enjoy the read over there, and do join Mr Schmelzer in his fun exchange with other bloggers if you have the time.

Thomas More: A Mind Like A Diamond

Love Undefiled has posts a longer quotation from G.K. Chesterton about Thomas More, a favorite saint and the name of the alma mater of this author.  Chesterton wrote what may be my favorite short piece about More in the newly-reprinted The Well and the Shallows. Chesterton’s discussion begins first by stating that the mind of More was like a diamond which a tyrant through into a ditch because he couldn’t break it.  Thomas More is often regarded as one of the greatest men to speak the English language for his commitment and dedication to all that he held, even unto the laying down of his life.  He is also remarkable for being a lawyer who tried to save his own life as a point of law but would still not move when that law could no longer protect him.  As a result he is a saint for all times and a much needed example for lawyers.

A fine comparison of Chesterton’s essay would be to read C.S. Lewis’ criticism of More’s Utopia and not the striking similarities of both conclusion and analysis.  Happy reading, dear reader!