Powell's Purchases

This weekend my older sister, Melissa, and I got to go on a rare and long-awaited girls' getaway to Portland.  It. was. splendid!

Of course we took a trip to Powell's, so I wanted to give you a little rundown on the winners :)

[right before succumbing to a basket]

 \\ Name of the Wind and Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss.  I read both of these this summer and blogged about them here.  I had borrowed a friend's copies, but, after reading, really wanted my own set to mark up, reference, and loan out.  Checkity-check.

\\ First Meetings by Orson Scott Card.  A set of short, origin stories in the Enderverse - including the original 1977 "Ender's Game" short story - was just too much to pass up.  

\\ Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay.  I'd been wanting to read this book since I saw the trailer for this adaptation 2 years ago.  Since then, every visit to Powell's has included me at least considering this book.  On Saturday, I finally caved.  Can't wait to read it :)

\\ [not pictured] The Everlasting Man and The Ball and the Cross by GK Chesterton.  Because Chesterton.  The first is theology; the latter, a novel.  I've heard good things of both and Chesterton is good for the mind in so many ways!

\\ a few gifts for people that may or may not have been featured here.

It was a fabulous visit to Powell's and, while searching for different GKC works (he's in fiction, mystery, theology, mysticism, and literary criticism :), I struck up a conversation with a Powell's employee about how great Chesterton was, how exciting Pope Francis is, etc. [as you do].  She wrote out all the different stacks for me to check and then, before letting me loose to hunt for Chesterton, gave me a 10% off coupon.  Score!  

Love love love Powell's :)

31 Days of Books: Manalive

Title:  Manalive

Author:  GK Chesterton  [You didn't think I could leave him out of this, did you?]

Published:  1912

Year I read it:  2011

One sentence summary:  The odd and enthusiastic Innocent Smith arrives at a London boarding house full of disillusioned modernists; but after the stir he causes in the cause to improve his fellow tenants, he is arrested and charged with burglary, polygamy, and attempted murder, turning the boarding house into the trial of Innocent.

Interesting fact:  Chesterton was friends and philosophical adversaries with George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion.

Three reasons to read it:

• Chesterton is all about paradox - and this book is full of them!  I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say that Innocent is himself a paradox.
• If you need a reminder of the delight of the little things, this would be a great book to read.  There are so many moments we moderns/post-moderns take for granted that the author recognizes and celebrates.
• This novel is witty and funny and perfectly Chesterton.  [Don't tell anyone, but I actually preferred this to Man Who Was Thursday]

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• It is very obviously and intentionally a parable.

Great quotes:

“I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”  

“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.”

“I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.”

Here it is! As promised, here's the list of books I've read this year. I've been really excited about it because I honestly don't know how many I've read this year--all I know is it felt like a lot. I purposely have not added them up yet, so this is as much a surprise to me as it is to all of you.

So here it goes, the list, in order of completion:

1. Caleb Williams - William Godwin
2. Wieland - Charles Brockden Brown*
3. Radical - David Platt
4. Letter's from an American Farmer - J. Hector St. John de Crevcoeur*
5. Charlotte Temple - Susanna Rowson*
6. The Spy - James Fenimore Cooper
7. Through a Screen Darkly - Jeffrey Overstreet
8. Aurelia's Colors - Jeffrey Overstreet
9. Cyndere's Midnight - Jeffrey Overstreet
10. Raven's Ladder - Jeffrey Overstreet
11. The Ale Boy's Feast - Jeffrey Overstreet
12. Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen*
13. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
14. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
15. Mansfield Park - Jane Austen*
16. Emma -Jane Austen*
17. Persuasion - Jane Austen*
18. Sanditon - Jane Austen
19. Manalive - G. K. Chesterton
20. Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
21. A Jesuit Off Broadway - Father James Martin
22. The Age of Innocence - Edith Wharton
23. Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
24. A Study in Scarlet - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
25. A Mercy - Toni Morrison
26. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
27. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
28. Agamemmnon - Aeschylus*
29. Room - Emma Donoghue
30. Eumenides - Aeschylus*
31. The Road - Cormac McCarthy
32. Seven Against Thebes - Aeschylus
33. The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
34. Prometheus Bound - Aeschylus*
35. Fun Home - Alison Bechdel
36. Oedipus Tyrannos - Sophocles*
37. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte*
38. Antigone - Sophocles
39. Philoctetes - Sophocles
40. History of Love - Nicole Krauss
41. Hippolytos - Euripides*
42. Medea - Euripides*
43. The Gangster We're all Looking For - Le Thi Diem Thuy
44. Alcestis - Euripides
45. Bacchae - Euripides
46. A Gesture Life - Chang-rae Lee
47. Frogs - Aristophanes
48. Hard Times - Charles Dickens*
49. Loneliness as a Way of Life - Thomas Dumm
50. Surprised by Oxford - Carolyn Webber
51. The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins
52. Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins
53. Mockningjay - Suzanne Collins

Key: 
*re-read
___ read for school


Aside from obvious favorites by Austen and the Bronte's, a few of these I'd recommend are:

• History of Love - A "beautifully sad," multiple-narrator novel about an aged and lonely holocaust survivor named Leopold Gursky and the lives his writing unknowingly changed--including his own.
• Room - The story of Jack, a precocious 5-year-old, who lives with his mother and has never been outside the Room he was born in. Told in his 1st-person, present tense perspective, this intense and gripping narrative reveals the beauty of a mother's love.
• Manalive - G. K. Chesterton's hilarious novel about Innocent Smith--a man who defies religion and convention. Chesterton masterfully demonstrates that to do the truly right thing in modernity, we have to "break the law."
• and Surprised by Oxford - The memoir of a grad student studying English at Oxford, who found herself swept into the deepest Romance she could possibly imagine. Carolyn Webber's original imagery, constant literary allusions, and brilliant prose would be reason enough to read this--the setting and story make it magical.

I'd love to hear what you read this year and here's to many more books in 2012 =)

Quotes on Austen [part 2]

Well, currently working on page 21 of my thesis... its getting there. A few more fun ones:

"...there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them… Such is the common cant.—“And what are you reading, Miss----?” “Oh! it is only a novel!” replies the young lady… “It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;”  or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language." - Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, in defense of the novel

"But while Emily Brontë was as unsociable as a storm at midnight, and while Charlotte Brontë was at best like that warmer and more domestic thing, a house on fire—they do connect themselves with the calm of George Eliot, as the forerunners of many later developments of the feminine advance." - G.K. Chesterton [okay, not on Austen, but it was too funny to pass up]

"Men like Coleridge or Carlyle… had gone through furnaces of culture where even less creative people might have been inflamed to creation. Jane Austen was not inflamed or inspired or even moved to be a genius; she simply was a genius. Her fire, what there was of it, began with herself… There was nothing in her circumstances, or even in her materials, that seems obviously meant for the making of such an artist." - G.K. Chesterton, introduction to "Love and Freindship" (1922)

"I don't smoke or drink, you know...because I think they're drugs. And yet I fancy all hobbies, like my camera and bicycle, are drugs too... Drugging myself with speed and sunshine and fatigue and fresh air. Pedaling the machine so fast that I turn into a machine myself. That's the matter with all of us. We're too busy to wake up." - G. K. Chesterton, Manalive

I read through 2/3 of Manalive this afternoon and I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I thought I liked Chesterton before, but oh man, reading one of his novels--I'm loving it. One more fave quote:

"I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him--only to bring him to life." ahh! So good.

31 Days of Books: At the Back of the North Wind

Thanks to everyone who has shared their excitement over this project.  I'm happy to finally be getting some thoughts and recommendations out there.  I've come up with a list, but if there are any specific books I've read (or you think I've read) that you'd like to read my mini-review of, please leave a comment below!  Thanks again for reading :)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Title: At the Back of the North Wind

Author: George MacDonald

Published: 1871

Year I read it: 2008

One sentence summary: The fantastical tale of a boy named Diamond going on adventures with the North Wind and, eventually, to the land that lies at her back. 

Three reasons to read it:

• MacDonald's fantasy is tantamount! Chesterton, Lewis, Tolkien - they wouldn't be who they are without it. 
• This is a beautiful depiction both of God's sovereignty and of child-like faith. 
• Immersing yourself in awe & mystery for a few hundred pages does wonders for the soul 

One reason you maybe shouldn't:

• My brothers tease me mercilessly, saying this book is really creepy, partly because of their interpretation of the ending, partly because it's their job to tease me.  (May I assure you, it's rather beautiful!) 

Great quote:

I begin to think there are better things than being comfortable.

A poet is a man who is glad of something, and tries to make other people glad of it too.

Only he knew that to be left alone is not always to be forsaken.

This whole passage.

Right now I am loving G. K. Chesterton's Manalive... but I just came across this funny quote:
"Pym rose with sincere embarassment; for he was an American, and his respect for ladies was real, and not at all scientific."

"whaaaa?"

What does he mean? about Americans? about ladies? What the heck? hahaha

"To love means loving the unlovable.
To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable.
Faith means believing the unbelievable.
Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless."

- G. K. Chesterton

Chesterton, the Great

Because I'm reading him right now and reminded of all the reasons I adore him. Poet. Philosopher. Paradox.


“Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.”


“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”


“Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.”


“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered.”


“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”


“It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.”


“There is the great lesson of 'Beauty and the Beast,' that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.” 

“Poets do not go mad; but chess-players do. Mathematicians go mad, and cashiers; but creative artists very seldom. I am not, as will be seen, in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger does lie in logic, not in imagination.” 

“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.” 

“We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

“We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?” 

“We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth.”

“Jesus promised his disciples three things—that they would be completely fearless, absurdly happy, and in constant trouble.”

“It is well sometimes to half understand a poem in the same manner that we half understand the world.”

“Free verse'? You may as well call sleeping in a ditch 'free architecture'.”

“A thing may be too sad to be believed or too wicked to be believed or too good to be believed; but it cannot be too absurd to be believed in this planet of frogs and elephants, of crocodiles and cuttle-fish.”

“Romance is the deepest thing in life. It is deeper than reality.”

“I wish we could sometimes love the characters in real life as we love the characters in romances. There are a great many human souls whom we should accept more kindly, and even appreciate more clearly, if we simply thought of them as people in a story."

What I'm reading

Thanks to my sister for informing me of the "what i'm reading" party, sponsored by Emily of Jones Design Company.

So, what have I been reading?  Since the New Year began, I've been focusing on reading more... and I think it's working because this weekend I'm set to finish my 4th book of the year :)

I started off the year by finishing Return of the King - 2nd time through and I loved it!  But from my multiple blog posts / instagram pictures, I think you knew that ;)

After spending 6 months in Middle Earth (I read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy and a bio of Tolkien last summer/fall), I wanted a quick, contemporary novel to pull me back into reading as a habit.  Little did I know how quick the book I picked was.  Last Monday night (all in one night) I read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.  [For those of you aren't familiar, John Green makes up half of the "Vlog Brothers" with his nerdy, artistic, michevious counterpart being Hank Green, who is, among other things, the executive producer for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.  Needless to say - they're a really cool pair.]  Getting back to the novel, it was unbelievable.  Tragic and literary and raw and thought provoking and beautiful. Wow!  Being as sad and raw as it was, I wouldn't recommend this book to just anyone, but if you're interested, ask me and I will tell you more.

[I'm skipping over the third book because it was just aweful... I'm pretending it didn't happen.]
And currently, I'm reading The Time Traveler's Wife - which has kind of sucked me in.  There have been some parts I've really liked, but quite a few things which bothered me. But it is definitely a novel that is easy to read.  I started 2 days ago and am now half way through - but I have a feeling I'm going to end up liking the first half a lot more than the last half :/  We shall see.

A few other books on my radar:

• The Four Agreements - Don Miguel Ruiz
• The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
• The Crowd, the Critic, and the Muse - Michael Gungor
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald*
• Culture of Hope - Turner Frederik
• The Hours - Michael Cunningham
• Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen*
• One Thousand Gifts - Ann Voskamp
• Letters from a Lost Generation - Mark Bostridge
• Orthodoxy - G.K. Chesterton
• Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
• and some more Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

You know, just a few ;)  You can see what I've been reading or what I hope to read on my goodreads page.

*re-reads :)

It's a good day in my fictional life:

Thursday = LBD and I think it's going to be an important one today! :)

And then theres this adaptation I've been following for 3+ years... and i only have to wait 16 more hours :D


"People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature... It is merely that the novel is more true..." - G. K. Chesterton

"It's going to be a big, big, big, big day!"

Thank you, Effie Trinket ;)

I'm so excited for today, its ridiculous! 

Well, first off, I finally got some new makeup--makes a girl feel fresh.

But I have some fun adventures in store. After class, I get to take part in some fun, academic activities.

First off is the Gauguin exhibit at the SAM. I'm going with my Comp Lit class and I'm very excited to see the exhibit--let alone have time in a museum.

Afterwards I'll be zooming back over to UW for the monthly gathering of the G. K. Chesterton Society of Seattle. Tomorrow night's topic: Why read Jane Austen

I'm so excited! And hey, I can use some of it as research for my thesis =)

Overall, its going to be a pretty fabulous day!

Do you ever get overwhelmed with the reality of existence?  The weightiness of life?  Like you can glimpse some bit of eternity or something.

I've only heard a bit about the turmoil in Egypt.  I read about accidental deaths or murders on a daily basis.  I see hatred in the world. 

I also see love.  I see people do beautiful things.  Even simple acts sometimes make me want to cry.  I see contagious vulnerability and it makes me want to live transparently, generously, humbly. 

Sometimes it seems to be too much.  There is so much of every extreme in this world.  We've found a million ways to divide humanity and only a handful to unite.  That handful of reasons are strong though.  I'm realizing more and more that God doesn't view us through our divisions.  He didn't see the woman at the well as "a Samaritan."  He doesn't see Egyptians or Americans.  He doesn't see race the way we do.  He sees His family - both those who are lost and those who have been found by Him.  We can be so harsh, so critical.  What if I was born in Syria rather than the US?  What if I was a druggie-baby in foster care?  What if I lived in poverty with little educational encouragement?  I am immensely grateful for where and when God placed me.  But how can I take pride in something I had no control over?  So who am I to judge?

The Lord has been speaking to me about seeing the sameness rather than seeing the differences.  I want to love all his people.  This leads some people to think I'm over-sensitive.  But when you truly empathize with another human being - how could I not be sensitive when people say such harsh things about them or, even worse, when they completely ignore them?   I'm not perfect at this.  More than not, I probably do incredibly insensitive things.  I know I don't empathize enough.  If I did, I'm pretty sure my priorities would look completely different.  But I am listening to Father, and I'm allowing Him to change my priorities - if ever so slowly.  But even when it's painful - I'm grateful.  Because when it comes down to it, there is not much of a difference between me and the overlooked, unloved people so far away. 

Today, this is my glimpse of life.  It is a weight on my soul.  But it is also a gift.

There is no great difference between us.  In the words of GK Chesterton:  “We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.”

Of course Mumford reads Chesterton! 

Currently dreaming of [FINALLY] seeing them perform live :)  But for now, I will just appreciate that Marcus Mumford draws inspiration from the best.

spring break round-up

The other day I was thinking and didn't feel like I had done a lot over spring break, but as I recounted parts of my spring break, I realized that wasn't true. Here are just a few of the fun things I've done over break:

Finished The Man Who Was Thursday [Gilbert Keith Chesterton]

Read A Severe Mercy [Sheldon Vaunaken] and The Sign of Four [Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]

I took my first solo-road trip and went to Portland for a few days, which included a fabulous visit to Powell's. I also got to catch up with my good friend Maia, whom I met studying in Oxford.

Went to the Cinema twice. Once to see The Artist on a date with Charlli:

 and The Hunger Games with Josiah

 Visited IKEA for the first time as an adult. 

Completed a project with the spoils of the IKEA visit:

Got to get all dolled up for both the CCA Auction

 and a wedding.

Plus my trip to the MAC counter with Christine.

[I still absolutely love playing dress up!]

Checked my inbox and mailbox obsessively for news from Oxford

Stayed over with my sister and her family for a night, where I enjoyed Ross's fabulous steak and re-watching the Downton Abbey Christmas special [sigh =].

Sent my good friend Lois off to England with a fabulous double-header of great period dramas.

Had a Packer-Surface girl date in the sun this Saturday. We walked all around Juanita Bay and got to see a bald eagle.

Also went on an amazing Seattle date with my aunt Kristina.

Worked more shifts to make some extra $$

Got to introduce Stephanie H. to Sherlock (BBC).

Phone chats with my friends from far-away, like Beks and Kristina D.

* * * * *

"Let me explain. No there's too much. Let me sum up."

Overall, I had a marvelous time off. I read leisurely, spent lots of time with some of my favorite people, went on a few adventures, tried new things, had my patience stretched (in regards to Oxford), shed a few beautiful tears, laughed more than I cried, wrote a surprising amount, filled my journal with tons of quotes, survived the Ides of March, missed London a lot, sent and received letters, re-focused for the near future, and learned to choose peace + trust even more.

Ahh... goodbye Spring break, hello Spring quarter.

[photo-credit: Sarah]

Stories

teach us how to love

and swallow sadness,

find light in darkness,

 turn away from despair.

Crafting and grafting us

into a plot much bigger,

much smaller

than our own.

They remake us

like their protagonists,

from coward to courageous.

Each story that passes

through our hands,

through our minds,

is a gift

wrapped up inside words.

 "Hello, old friend

and here we are,

you and me

on the last page."

Where they end

our hearts break or smile,

crying from tragedy or delight.

But then, our next page.

While their story ends,

our journey is only mid-way,

another chapter,

a new gift.

Top:  Nurse, Young Man, Kiss-a-gram

Below:  Old Man, Journalist, Hero

"We are all stories in the end..."
- The Doctor

"The end of a matter is better than it's beginning."

- Ecclesiastes 7.8

“If seeds in the black earth can turn into such beautiful roses, what might not the heart of man become in its long journey toward the stars?"

- GK Chesterton

"It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer."
- Samwise Gamgee

  

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”  

- Madeleine L'Engle

"You were my new dream."

- Flynn Rider

"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die...that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living."

- The Count

[HitRECord]

"Though truth is heavier than fiction,

Gravity lifts as the projectionist rolls tape.
And it makes us brave again"

- Sleeping at Last

On despair

Lately I've been thinking on despair. Delightful, I know. But it keeps coming up.

Call it seasonal vitamin-D deficiency. Blame it on other circumstances in my life. Settle it as the result of too much melancholy viewing or reading. But, whatever the case, despair has been knocking on my door. 

I'm becoming convinced that despair is the greatest evil. Not the greatest sin - but the end-result & effect of sin. 

Despair is so much more than sadness. I've been thinking on the pinpoint moments in some of my favorite stories when despair enters the picture. 

It's when Peeta doesn't love Katniss. 
It's when Ron leaves Harry. 
Or John fails to find Sherlock's pulse. 
Rose gets separated from the Doctor. 
Frodo Baggins forgets the taste of strawberries. 

Failure. Rejection. Goodbyes. These are always the stories' worst moments. 

But the road to resurrection runs through the grave. 

The greatest stories - both in life & in fiction - force the protagonist to walk a mile or more with despair. I've run up against it a few times. We all have in different ways. 

But there are two conclusions I've come to regarding Despair. 

The first is my prayer in the midst of my despair or any loved one's is that I'd be faithful. A faithful friend. A faithful person. "Frodo wouldn't have got very far without Sam." In fact, according to Tolkien, Sam was the hero of Lord of the Rings… and I can see why. The greatest courage isn't in brandishing glittering swords, but in traversing pain our souls were never designed for. "For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point--and does not break."  - GK Chesterton.

The other conclusion is one I came to after talking with my dentist, truly great fellow. The thing is, if despair is the greatest evil, joy must be the greatest good. And I'm not speaking of anything akin to humanist happiness. Many classic philosophers got close to this truth, that joy was the aim, but they all lacked something. Until Christ, "for the joy set before Him, endured the cross," they had no response to despair, and no true reason for joy. But we have. 

My friend, Esther, shared with me today, "Hope is the ability to look the past & present squarely in the face and say, 'I know that my future will make beautiful and light these harsh and dark moments.'" That's what I'm holding onto. 

I look to the stories again and again, not for happy endings, but for hopeful ones. They serve to remind that the truest stories don't end in despair. "When the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer." Until then, "never cruel or cowardly; never give up, never give in." No, now is the time to take another step through the valley, trusting the mountain is still there. All we can do in the meantime is to hold onto the promises, to wait and to hope. 

Mysticism keeps men sane...

Mysticism keeps men sane.  As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. 

The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic.  He has permitted the twilight.  He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland.  He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them.  He has always cared more for truth than for consistency.  If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them.  His spiritual sight is steroscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.  Thus he has always believed that there was such a thing as fate, but such a thing as free will also.  Thus he believed that childeren were indeed the kingdom of heaven, but nevertheless ought to be obedient to the kingdom of earth.  He admired youth because it was young and age because it was not. 

It is exactly this balance of apparent contradictions that has been the whole buoyancy of the healthy man.  The whole secret of mysticism is this: that man can understand everything by the help of what he does not understand.

- GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

Doing research for my honors thesis when I came across this lovely =)

Seriously? Austen's Juvenilia was first published with a preface from Gilbert the Keith Chesterton?

Haha... favorite authors and happiness upon happiness!

A few goodies:

"It might seem a very wild use of the wrong word to say that Jane Austen was elemental. It might even seem even a little wanton to insist that she was original. Yet this objection would come from the critic not really considering what is meant by an element or an origin...

If it seemed odd to call her elemental, it may seem equally odd to call her exuberant. These pages betray her secret; which is that she was naturally exuberant. And her power came, as all power comes, from the control and direction of exuberance...

Jane Austen was not inflamed or inspired or even moved to be a genius; she simply was a genius."

I don't know who made me respect who more... but I adore them both tonight more than ever!

Do you know what's torture? Going to the dentist.

No! Not for the reasons you're thinking. Torture is your dentist bringing up Chesterton, Tolkien, Lewis, Eugene Peterson, a couple novels, the beauty & wonder God created around us - and not being able to say anything because his hand is in your mouth!!

:/ :)