Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee...

Tuesday, May 19th, 2009

I'm back

"Let all your things be done with charity." (1 Corinthians 16:14)

(Stolen from

michaelmichael)

Well, last week was my last week of classes, thank-goodness. (Yes, I know. I had *nothing* compared to most people. Still. lol.) I still have one research paper that I have to turn into my English teacher sometime tomorrow. I also had some questions on it in a few details that I might still need to fix (I sent her an email, but I forgot she was supposed to be gone somewhere yesterday, and perhaps today as well; I don't remember. So in the meantime, I just guessed what I was supposed to do, just in case I don't get a reply in time. In any case, prayers would be appreciated! Thanks!). Anyway, once I turn that in tomorrow, I should be done with school till July 1, so that's good. So that means I can get back on LiveJournal! (I had made some posts and comments on LJ during this time, plus spent some more time on Facebook, but....it will be nice to be back on LJ more regularly! And even when I do go back to school in July, it shouldn't keep me off LJ as much as it did this time.)

The last couple of days, I also got around to counting my books, and discovered that I have a lot of them. lol. At this moment, I have 1,238 books. That also includes 125 Bibles and 42 New Testaments. :-) (Just to give you an idea, the Bibles alone, not including the New Testament, are by themselves about two and a half times as many as all of my books by and about GKC combined.)

Speaking of which, yesterday at the thrift shop I bought six books, including a book by Agatha Christie At Bertram's Hotel, which cost me fifty cents. I have never read anything by her, but I had to buy that novel because in it she mentions GKC. lol.

"Now don't you worry Mrs. McCrae," he said in his genial fashion, as he sat down to the meal she had prepared for his arrival. We'll hunt the absent-minded fellow down. Ever heard that story about Chesterton? G.K. Chesterton, you know, the writer. Wired to his wife when he'd gone on a lecture tour 'Am at Crew Station. Where ought I to be?'

He laughed. Mrs. McCrae smiled dutifully. She did not think it was very funny because it was so exactly the sort of thing that Canon Pennyfather might have done.

OK, I guess I'll write some more later. Hope everything is doing well. (And if there is anything important that I missed during my absence, please let me know! Thanks!)

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Friday, March 6th, 2009

I'm back! :-)

OK, my "break" is over, and I'm back now :-)

During my "break", I finished reading Surprised By Joy by C.S. Lewis, and then I read completely Grace, Predestination, and the Salvific Will of God. Ironically, even though Lewis is my third-favorite writer of all time, and even though his book was only about 240 pages, I read the 700-page book faster. Odd that. But I loved both books in any case.

And naturally, I have to include the major passages in Surprised by Joy in which Lewis mentioned Chesterton. There were 8 different occasions in the book. 4 of them were simply quoting or mentioning him, for the most part, without it being directly involved with Lewis' story itself. But the other 4 occasions were directly involved with his story, in which he detailed Chesterton's influence on him, so I have included those 4 passages below the LJ-cut:

( Lewis on Chesterton )

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Sunday, February 1st, 2009

TMWWT

The Guardian has a list of the 1000 novels everyone must read before they die

Under its science fiction and fantasy category, at #30, is G.K. Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday [Source] (though the link at The Guardian basically spoils the plot for anyone who hasn't read the novel yet. Just a warning.) And

zamar46, at #42 is American Gods by Neil Gaiman. :-)

Anyway, as for the Super Bowl, since the Rams were, well, the Rams this year, I didn't pay much attention to football. So I wasn't too particularly attached to either team in the Super Bowl. Still, I was rooting for the Cardinals to win. You know the results of that. So I'll simply quote Tolkien:

I am a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect 'history' to be anything but a 'long defeat'

It seems so appropriate, even if perhaps it was not meant to be applied to sporting events. lol.

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Saturday, January 31st, 2009

The Defendant

OK, I posted this on

christianreader (which you should join if you haven't already! :-)).

Anyway....
___________________________________

OK, I read so much this month, that I could barely keep track of it...I read an astonishing..er...1 book this month. lol. OK, ok. But it was a huge book. It was...er...75 pages. :-)

It was The Defendant by G.K. Chesterton (found online here). It was a collection of newspaper articles he wrote, first published in 1901 (when he was 27 years old), in which he "defended" things such as skeletons, planets, ugly things, farce, and so forth. But it was filled with such great wisdom. Each article was only about 3 pages in length. It was a minor work of his, but it did have some influence. From one biography of Alfred Hitchcock:

The influence of Chesterton must be assessed as well. Much admired and celebrated by the Catholic clergy, and read by Catholic schoolboys, Chesterton's popular essays "A Defence of Penny Dreadfuls" and "A Defence of Detective stories" (published in his 1901 collection The Defendant) entertained the adolescent Hitchcock, and provided him with ideas for the formation of his own style and vision when he was an apprentice filmmaker. It was Chesterton who defended popular literature, Chesterton who pointed out the archetypal, fairy-tale structure of police stories, and Chesterton who defended exploration of criminal behavior.

"One of the strangest examples of the degree to which ordinary life is undervalued is the example of popular literature, the vast mast of which we contentedly describe as vulgar." Hitchcock read in "A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls."

[Source- The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, Donald Spoto, p. 40)]

Below the cut, I included some quotes from the book (at least one from each article), some short, some long. One of the quotes from the "Introduction" is quite long, though, so...(you may wish to skip over the longer quotes, though I thought them quite good)

( Continue Reading )

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Monday, January 19th, 2009

Manalive

Dale Price on his list of American heroes (posted 8-31-06)

...Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr...His leadership and example ensured that America's struggle over racial issues would be fought with paper, not bullets. In most times and places, it hasn't worked out that way.

[Source]

Also.

I don't watch that many movies, admittedly. But I *do* plan on watching this movie:

Manalive: The Movie

OK, perhaps it's not as big as Orson Welles making a radio dramatization of The Man Who Was Thursday (with Welles as Gabriel Syme) in 1938 (just a few weeks before his radio dramatization of The War of the Worlds). But it's still pretty cool. :-)

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Sunday, January 11th, 2009

You know, I really just wish to thank everybody on my friends list. I have so many friends on LJ that are so good, and I am nowhere close to being able to express my gratitude to them. Everyone seems to be so wonderful, and, well, I really don't know how to express in words how I feel. So let me just say: thank-you so much for your friendships. I feel really blessed. I just needed to say that.
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My plan on reading more often apparently isn't working out as well as I'd hoped. OK, I admit it: I'm a slacker. lol. I do, however, plan on doing some more reading today, so...

Finally, I haven't quoted GKC's fiction nearly as much as his non-fiction, so now I will do that. So below I have included a section from his novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill that I really enjoy.

The Napoleon of Notting Hill was Chesterton's first novel, written in the year 1904, when he was 30 years old, but set in the year 1984. It is my fourth-favorite novel. And, in a Barnes and Noble interview, when asked what his ten favorite books were, the first book Terry Pratchett listed was The Napoleon of Notting Hill. As Pratchett wrote:

For teaching me how to see the world. To Chesterton, even a quiet street was a world of fantasy and a street lamp more precious that a star (because there's a universe full of stars, compared to which street lamps are really uncommon.

Anyway, here's the section I was wishing to quote today:

( section from The Napoleon of Notting Hill )

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Friday, January 9th, 2009

Left Behind, Survey, Gype!

I ask this every so often, but I've had some new friends since the last time I asked it, so I'll ask it again: anyone here ever post on the old Left Behind Message Board before it was murdered about five years ago?

Anyway, I got off work early today. That's nice :-)

I really need to do some type of survey or something. Preferably make one up myself, so I only answer the questions I wish to answer. I'll try to do that at some point in the near future...

My favorite game: Gype! Even though I don't know any of the rules. lol.

What is Gype?

...All Chestertonians ought to know that Gype is THE game - invented by Chesterton himself, with the able assistance of H. G. Wells...

OK, that's it for now. :-)

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Monday, January 5th, 2009

St. Louis and churches...

Since I now can have more userpics, I decided I would use one that

moredetails very generously made for me....this one of the Arch! :-)

Since I was born in St. Louis, and lived in that area (about 15 miles east of St. Louis, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River) most of my life, I do miss it. I hope some day to move back there...

BTW, here's the website of my former fundamentalist Baptist church. They don't have much on there (not even any pictures), but I hope they one day do...I owe so much to the people of that church, for leading me to Christ and helping me learn the Scriptures, among many other things...

And here's the website of the parish that received me into the Catholic Church. It has pictures! :-)

And here's the website of the Catholic church I attend now in Kentucky. Not much on there, though...

OK, I didn't know what else to write tonight, so....I just decided to do that instead. :-)
___________________________________

G.K. Chesterton and several other literary figures were once asked what book they would prefer to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island.

"The complete works of Shakespeare," said one writer without hesitation.

"I choose the Bible," said another.

"How about you?" they asked Chesterton.

"I would choose Thomas' Guide to Practical Shipbuilding," replied Chesterton. [Joke Barn]

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Monday, December 29th, 2008

Christmas

Well, I just decided I would talk about my Christmas. :-)

OK, perhaps I should clarify it by saying my Christmas Day (after all, Christmas isn't over yet!) Anyway, I didn't really do much on Christmas. For the first time since we moved to Kentucky in 1999, my family did not go to the St. Louis area for Christmas, but stayed at home. That being the case, money that I had planned on using for such a trip (such as on hotels, food, etc.), I was able to find other uses for. :-)

I didn't really get much for Christmas (a box of chocolate covered cherries), but it was probably the best Christmas of my life. I realized how incredibly God has blessed me. Leading me to Christ, giving me such a wonderful family, and having such wonderful friends (including on LJ!), among so many other things...I know that I can, and have, take it for granted. So I guess such a realization was probably the best "Christmas present" I could have received. (No doubt it helps that I have a more grateful attitude towards life ever since reading GKC's novel Manalive earlier this month).

Speaking of GKC, I'll just finish by adding that the Wall Street Journal had an article on Chesterton today:

A Century of 'Thursdays'

G.K. Chesterton dismissed his own book as 'moonshine,' but it endures.

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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008

Christmas

Perfect Christmas reading!

(taken from the book C.S. Lewis said helped him most become a Christian):

"The God in the Cave"

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Monday, December 15th, 2008

Christmas and Colombo

The Gospel According to Steve Martin

I absolutely hate bad weather. Anyone wish to take it aware from here for free? Please? Well, one good thing is that at least tomorrow my work will have an hour delay, so I have one less hour to work tomorrow :-)

I can't believe Christmas is next week. I am in no way prepared for it yet. D'oh!

Anyway, another day, another example of Chesterton's influence I discover.

This time, it's Columbo. According to the creators:

When we created Columbo, we were influenced by the bureaucratic Petrovitch in Crime and Punishment and by G.K. Chesterton's marvelous little cleric, Father Brown

Source

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Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Some Damnable Errors About Christmas

Some Damnable Errors About Christmas

I haven't read it all the way, through, but....lol.

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Sunday, December 7th, 2008

KJV; G.K. Chesterton

"And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficent for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then I am strong." (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

I absolutely love the King James Version of the Bible. Granted, my favorite version is the Douay-Rheims version, but...those two versions, the KJV and Douay, when it comes to beauty....wow. They have no equal. (I also use modern versions such as the RSV-CE, Jerusalem Bible, and so forth, especially when it comes to Bible study, but as for devotional reading, I prefer the KJV and Douay).

Anyway, I found a couple more references to G.K. Chesterton last night, one nonreligious and one religious:

First, from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise:

He read voluminously all spring, the beginning of his eighteenth year: "The Gentleman from Indiana," "The New Arabian Nights," "The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne," "The Man Who Was Thursday," which he liked without understanding;

I think that description applies to a lot of people who read The Man Who Was Thursday. lol.

Second, from Pope Benedict XVI's In the Beginning A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall:

G.K. Chesterton was often blessed with the gift of a striking turn of phrase. He certainly hit upon a decisive aspect of the work of St. Thomas Aquinas when he observed that, if the great doctor were to be given a name in the style of the Carmelite Order ("...ofthe Child Jesus," "of the Mother of God," etc.), he would have to be called Thomas a Creatore, "Thomas of the Creator." Creator and creation are the core of his theological thought.

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Thursday, December 4th, 2008

Thanks!

I just wish to thank everyone once again for your prayers. I greatly appreciate it. If anyone has any prayer requests, please let me know. God bless.

_________________________________________________

From Confessions of a Caricaturist by Oliver Herford (1917):

When Plain Folk, such as you or I,
See the Sun sinking in the sky,
We think it is the Setting Sun,
But Mr. Gilbert Chesterton
Is not so easily misled.
He calmly stands upon his head,
And upside down obtains a new
And Chestertonian point of view,
Observing thus, how from his toes
The sun creeps nearer to his nose,
He cries with wonder and delight,
"How Grand the SUNRISE is to-night!"

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Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

George Bernard Shaw

Three quotes from someone not named Chesterton!

They are rather from Chesterton's good friend, George Bernard Shaw:

-England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

-Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

-A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Speaking of George Bernard Shaw, here is part of a humorous letter from Shaw to Chesterton, when he was trying to get Chesterton to write a play (which Chesterton eventually did, and which play Shaw praised).
__________________________________________

What about that play? It is no use trying to answer me in the New Age: the real answer to my article is the play. I have tried fair means: The New Age article was the inauguration of an assault below the belt. I shall deliberately destroy your credit as an essayist, as a journalist, as a critic, as a Liberal, as everything that offers your laziness as a refuge, until starvation and shame drive you to serious dramatic parturition. I shall repeat my public challenge to you; vaunt my superiority; insult your corpulence; torture Belloc; if necessary, call on you and steal your wife’s affections by intellectual and athletic displays, until you contribute something to the English drama.

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Thursday, November 20th, 2008

The Prophet Chesterton

You know, by now, I'm used to finding Chesterton "predicting" a hundred years ago much of what goes on today. As Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) wrote:

Bon vivant, wit, and tireless author, Chesterton lost the debate about the future direction of society to his contemporaries H. G. Wells, Bertrand Russell, and George Bernard Shaw. Chesterton saw the implications of their vision of twentieth century society, and he predicted exactly what would come of it. [Source- emphasis mine]

I think, however, the following is the weirdest of Chesterton's (in this case, unconscious) "prophecies" I have come across yet.

First, in the news:

Don’t give cow milk to kids, PETA urges Jharkhand

Replacing cow milk with delicious dairy-free soya milk is the easiest way to improve one’s health and to avoid supporting cruelty to cows”.

Now:

A reading from The Man Who Was Thursday (written, remember, exactly 100 years ago, in 1908):

This branch has always had the honour of electing Thursdays for the Central European Council. We have elected many and splendid Thursdays. We all lament the sad decease of the heroic worker who occupied the post until last week. As you know, his services to the cause were considerable. He organised the great dynamite coup of Brighton which, under happier circumstances, ought to have killed everybody on the pier. As you also know, his death was as self-denying as his life, for he died through his faith in a hygienic mixture of chalk and water as a substitute for milk, which beverage he regarded as barbaric, and as involving cruelty to the cow. Cruelty, or anything approaching to cruelty, revolted him always. [Source- emphasis mine]

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Monday, November 17th, 2008

GKC on NPR and Christianity Today

Chesterton was mentioned in two places today.

First, Chesterton was mentioned on NPR: "How To Be Killer At Cocktail Parties"

One of the three books she discusses is The Man Who Was Thursday:

Just saying this author's name — G.K. Chesterton — will make you look debonair, like someone who knows his way around a silk ascot.

Chesterton's best-known novel, The Man Who Was Thursday, is a metaphysical thriller full of quotable lines sure to make you look mighty witty. A lull in the conversation? Just throw in this line, which will fit any topic from politics to religion: "Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property so that they may more perfectly respect it." You need not say anything else the entire evening.

(emphasis mine)

And Christianity Today published an article this morning on Orthodoxy:

One Hundred Years of Wit and Wisdom

Chesterton wrote both Orthodoxy (my favorite book outside the Bible) and The Man Who Was Thursday (my favorite work of fiction) in the same year, which happened to be exactly 100 years ago (1908). He was 34 at the time he wrote them.

Anyway, wait for another post in a few minutes quoting Fulton Sheen again :-)

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Sunday, November 16th, 2008

The Man Who Was Thursday

From a link found via National Review's "The Corner", another person who reads Chesterton:

Bette Midler

I’m reading Chesterton right now. The Man Who Was Thursday. [Source]

Let's see: people who have read The Man Who Was Thursday (for more detail, see my page detailing Chesterton's influence):

-C.S. Lewis

-Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (who dedicated their novel Good Omens to Chesterton because they felt that while writing Good Omens they were "doing The Man Who Was Thursday". Terry Pratchett also stated: "It's worth pointing out that in The Man Who was Thursday and The Napoleon of Notting Hill he gave us two of the most emotionally charged plots in the twentieth century".

-Orson Welles (who made a radio dramatization of the novel with his Mercury Radio Theater on the Air a few weeks before his infamous War of the Worlds broadcast that caused such a widespread panic in America). Welles, who described the book as "shamelessly beautiful prose", starred as the protaganist Gabriel Syme.

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, in the first chapter of his first novel This Side of Paradise, describes the protaganist as having read The Man Who Was Thursday "which he liked without understanding"

-Kingsley Amis (who described the novel as the "most thrilling book" he had ever read)

-George Soros

-Michael Collins (who, following the advice of the chief anarchist in the novel, was able to avoid capture by the British by traveling in plain sight)

-Frank Kafka

-The Guardian, a newspaper in Britian, under its science fiction and fantasy category of books to read, lists at #30 The Man Who Was Thursday

Anyway, here's the description of The Man Who Was Thursday from brothersjudd.com

G. K. Chesterton's classic novel manages to provide a thriller that starts out like a Sherlock Holmes adventure and ends like Raiders of the Lost Ark, while at the same time offering a profound contemplation of the existence of evil in the world, the role of free will in the universe, the willingness of God to allow Man to suffer, and various other vexing metaphysical questions. Both the basic story and the religious philosophy are exciting, and though generations of readers have complained that the final chapter is too difficult to follow, the Annotated version has explanatory essays by Martin Gardner and there's an excellent essay of his available online, which do a great job of explaining just what Chesterton is up to. It is very much a Christian fantasy (or "Nightmare" to use Chesterton's own subtitle) but can be read with enjoyment by anyone who loves a good adventure yarn and doesn't mind being made to think. [Source]

You can read it online here for free:

The Man Who Was Thursday

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Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Sorry for all the posts today! (It's the weekend, so I have more to write). I also plan on making replies to certain people's LJ comments that I have been putting off replying to...I don't know when I will do it (maybe around Thanksgiving). Just to let you know I haven't forgotten. Anyway...

You know, given that my username is

augustine, and given that Augustine is one of my favorite authors period, and given that he also appears (to me anyway) to be the most influential Christian writer of all time (outside the authors of Scripture, of course), it seems kind of ironic that I have hardly ever quoted from him on this LJ (and it isn't because of a lack of good quotes). Anyway, that is something I wish to fix, starting tonight.

But instead of starting by giving quotes dealing with theology (as I plan on doing later), I'll only quote from one of his letters, which shows the origin of the saying "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".
__________________________________________

When my mother, who had followed me to Milan, found that the Church there did not fast on Saturday she began to be anxious and was uncertain what she ought to do. At that time such things meant nothing to me, but for her sake I consulted on this matter with Ambrose, that man of most blessed memory. He replied that he could teach me nothing but what he did himself since, if he knew anything better, he would be doing it....he continued and said to me: "When I am in Rome, I fast on Saturday; but here I do not. If you do not want to scandalize or be scandalized, follow the custom of whatever church you attend." When I told this to my mother she was glad to accept it. I recall this advice again and again and always esteem it as something given by a heavenly oracle.

-Letter of Augustine to Januarius (4) 54,1,3 (quoted in The Faith of the Early Fathers, volume 3, by William Jurgens; emphasis mine).
__________________________________________

BTW, just to share something I found interesting, the following was posted on Fitzgerald Society website, concerning the "Ninth International F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference", which took place last year. One of the presentations was:
__________________________________________
“‘Where are the Novels of Five Years Ago?’: G. K. Chesterton’s Influence on Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise and The Great Gatsby,” Neisha McGuckin (Boston MA) [Source]
__________________________________________

I knew of Chesterton's influence on Fitzgerald as far as This Side of Paradise was concerned (and mentioned it on my list of Chesterton's influence, which is always growing). But I didn't know Chesterton was influential on The Great Gatsby as well (or at least someone believes that to be the case anyway).

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One of these days I'm going to find a direct connection between G.K. Chesterton and Barack Obama. Until then, this indirect connection will have to do.

From the Telegraph I found an article about Obama's favorite painting.

It is Barack Obama's favourite painting: this famous canvas by the visionary Victorian artist George Frederic Watts arguably set the President-Elect on his long path to the White House... [Source]

(According to the article, Watts' art was also admired by Nelson Mandela and President Roosevelt.)

Anyway, Chesterton happened to write a biography on Watts which Watts himself enjoyed. As Joseph Pearce puts it:

Chesterton's second full-length biography was a portrait of the painter George Frederick Watts. As with his biography of Browning, however, Watts is memorable as much for the thoughts of the author as for the life of the subject: 'It is not so much the fact that there is no such thing as allegorical art, but rather the fact that there is no art that is not allegorical.' The book is also dotted with thought-provoking aphorisms, such as Chesterton's assertion that 'purity is the only atmosphere for passion'.

G.F. Watts died in the year Chesterton's biography was published, but not before he had read the book. On 5 April 1904 Frances recorded in her diary that Mrs G.F. Watts had written Gilbert 'a charming note' saying that her husband is 'really pleased with the little book'.

(Wisdom and Innocence, p. 85- emphasis mine)

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