Club of Queer Trades

The Club Of Queer Trades by G.K. Chesterton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


How even to review this? And what exactly is the point? For that matter, what was the point of it being written? It certainly wasn't a necessary book. I don't believe the great Catholic ever sat down and said, "How to save England and the rest of the world? Ah, this will do the trick." And if I'm mistaken, if he did utter such a phrase, it wasn't about this book. Perhaps he simply needed to stretch the legs of his mind--indeed, I shall take that as the excuse (it will serve as well as any other), and now, allow me to invite you to accompany him in his hike, for the air has the smell of salt, yet there are mountains, valleys, dark close woods and expansive vistas unfolding as vast as the very designs of God.

How does one take words--I dare say he employed none that I am not on intimate terms with--and craft such glories as this book with them? I love words (and use them interminably), but they do not perform for me the way they do for him. I would give all I own to be able to see the world with the eyes of Chesterton—wait: no, this isn't true. I would not. Were I to receive his vision it would terrify me, and I would probably give all I own to be restored to my blind state. Indeed, what would a man give to restore the roof of the sky if it were at a moment rent away?

It is no wonder that we build house-boxes to enclose our souls so that the four corners of the world do not tear them apart. We build fences and post signs and do all we can to make the world a safe, a soft place, when there is nothing quite so suddenly savage or terrible as a dandelion or a daffodil, and a dragon is no more awesome (though grown somewhat less common) than a dragonfly. Yet we seek to finally and fully conquer nature through knowledge: we seek to tame the world with science.

But Chesterton did not. He wanted the world to be wild, and he rebelled at the tired, grey apathy of sin that disguises itself in the guise of respectability and wisdom. So, he carried a brace of loaded pistols, a dagger, a sword cane and a cape, and he laughed as loudly and often as a child. For the world was not a safe place, and he was not a safe man.

Indeed, Chesterton was a man, who, with N. D. Wilson, would not be afraid that he would fall off a cliff, but that he would jump.

(And the book was good too.)



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The Wise Man Builds His House of Wode

A Wodehouse Miscellany by P.G. Wodehouse

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This collection I found to be hit and miss. However, Wodehouse is hard for me to judge, rather the same way that I would have difficulty distinguishing between Zoltan Kocsis and Lang Lang (may God and Mr. Appel forgive me for mentioning them in the same breath): I haven't yet fully developed the taste for Rachmaninov that I shall one day have, and therefore I don't have sufficient authority, either as a professional or as a lover, to intelligently discern betwixt the magnificent and the technically correct.

All this aside, Wodehouse is hilarious. He can't help but be hilarious. When he describes his ears as being large and "attached at right angles" and his overall appearance as tending toward the ailing piscine, I have a very justifiable reason to giggle at the image. When he describes the seventh of his nine holes of indoor golf, I lose a solid half-pound in burned calories and discover exactly what new colours appear after abstaining from air for forty seconds. (Leave it to Psmith is still my all time favorite comic work, particularly the application of socialist principles to an especially fine umbrella.) So, perhaps my taste is still developing and I shall look back on this as one of his greater works. Also, the application of wax to a floor is not particularly conducive to the appreciation of nuanced dry humour, but I still fear that this collection was not exactly his greatest.

Still, even with my lack of palate, I cannot overemphasize the playful joy of his prose: "Moths had nested in his wallet and raised large families," or, "he was a tubby chap, who looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say when," or, "he looked ever more like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow." Wodehouse is a necessary ingredient for a happy life. Just take care if you are reading him at the breakfast table that you take bites between sentences, and not in the midst of them, for his jokes be not of ruth and they enter the scenes as silently as Jeeves.



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Cause He Was In The Great Divorce

This is a picture of George MacDonald, which I find sheerly delightful.










The Day Boy and the Night Girl by George MacDonald

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Now this was just plain fun. An evil witch, good king (with a bit part), "orphaned" children, beautiful girl with giant eyes and strong, naive twit of a boy. After reading the first chapter, you know the plot of every other one, but it is such a delight to simply allow yourself to get whisked away and lost in MacDonald's mellifluous voice.

Simple plot overview: a wicked(ish) witch, about whom MacDonald has some delightful opinions, manages to acquire a boy to be raised only in light, never seeing the night, and a girl to be raised only in the darkness (underground), never seeing day. Obviously, they each are everything lovely and pure, meet and fall in love, et cetera res bonus, minus a prophecy, but then it's a short book: when I was three quarters of the way through, I was convinced that it must be a part of a series. So, read and enjoy it; very good for family readings, especially for groups of kids under the age of ninety.



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The Manlius Man That Ever Was Seen

The Consolation of Philosophy: Revised Edition by Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


How absolutely delightful: an honest use for Philosophy. Never again will I agree with Edward de Vere that there was never yet philosopher that could endure the toothache patiently: here is a man who endured a dungeon and finally an unjust death. Here is yet another example of the proof that "Wisdom infinite must form the best" world; if it took the torment of Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius to create his magnum opus, which of us would deny that, if he must die, as he must, this method of his death was by far the best? If it took such a fire to create so pure a gold, who could judge the suffering as needless? Who among us could have known that a penalty that must be paid could be put to such an use as this?

Lightly drifting from poetry into prose, carrying on a dialogue with Madame Philosophy, who appeared, as Dante's Virgil, to lead him through the darkened paths of his mind and reveal to him the causes of his torment, beginning with two: he had forgotten the end aim of all things, and he had forgotten what man truly is. The journey is well worth taking, and I would venture to say that it's essential. As a delightful aside: one of the earliest English translations of this book (which has been translated into every European tongue), if not the earliest, was a paraphrase by none other than Chesterton's White Horse King, King Alfred the Great.

I have read Philosophers, and have often thought little of them. I like Hume, as he manages to cut off not only everyone else's feet but his own also. I feel badly for Nietschze, who, proclaiming loudly that pity was a vice, that the weak should be allowed to perish so as to improve the overall quality of life for all men, ended his own life as a madman confined to a wheelchair, being fed soup from another's hand. I have read Philosophers as a man pores through an abandoned mine shaft for the treasure so often found, but I have rarely enjoyed the search, and often feel as Eustace or Pole emerging from the underworld, as I emerge to once again breathe the free air of Donne, Tolkien or Chesterton. This is the first time that I have found so great a quantity of wealth so beautifully arranged under a moonlit sky, and I am basking in the glory of it all. Philosophy is truly a gift from God, and one of His greatest.

This book is magnificent, and truly worth any price. Which is good, as Boethius paid a great one for it.



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Before He Killed the Turk

Don Juan by George Gordon Byron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well, this feels like a guilty pleasure. Nothing too serious, nothing too deep, wry, British, inappropriate humour that's always enjoyable in a Monty Python's "Castle Anthrax" sort of way. If you know what I'm talking about, you just earned another hundred years in Purgatory. Find an Anglican (Catholic Light: a third less ritual with half the guilt) to bless you and try not to think the phrase "You're probably gay."



Anyway, it was fun, but nothing to spend much more than a couple hours on. Lots and lots of commonplaces, but I still prefer Alexander Pope.



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Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father--

an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.
--Opening Sentence of An Imperfect Conflagration, The Parenticide Club.






The Parenticide Club by Ambrose Bierce

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Ambrose Bierce once gave a review which I would here apply to his The Parenticide Club: "The covers of this book are entirely too far apart." Yet, in a way, I loved it. It is truly horrific and appalling. The title says all you need to know: it's a collection of stories in which children murder their parents; Bierce's dry, lightly whimsical, journalistic prose starkly outlined against the backdrop of a gruesome, vicious celebration of murder after murder. Never, ever read it. But, in a way, I did love it.

To understand my four star review of a book that I shelved as appalling, a book in which half of my half-hour reading was spent rereading sentences in appalled disbelief, a bit of background may be necessary. I read a good bit, and have for some time. When I was in high school, my class was assigned Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in which Bierce describes in his always exquisite, deeply gothic prose, dry as the only sherry I'll drink, the botched hanging of a Civil War spy and his subsequent escape. Then, when he is almost safely in the home he is longing to reach, he feels a tremendous pressure on his neck and sees a blinding flash of light. The hanging hadn't failed, and he never escaped: the entire episode was in his head.

I had read stories where the protagonist dies, but I had never before encountered one in which the protagonist was nonexistent, or a real story arc in which there was no real conflict--I hadn't known it was allowed. Bierce gave us a hero, then revealed that while we were rooting for him, dodging bullets with him, feeling the exhaustion he was feeling, this entire time our hero was falling off a bridge with a noose under his left ear. Well, I loved his prose, and was fascinated with his ability to take nihilism to an entirely new level, so I got his Devil's Dictionary (he wanted to title it the Cynic's Word Book), and he now holds a special place in my heart as one of the most quotable authors on the planet (Chesterton is obviously greater than the rest, in several senses).

So, this book, this collection of short stories was what I expected. I was braced, and I bookended him with Bach to avoid the "slit carotid artery and do push-ups in the bathtub" impulse that he inevitably seems able to inspire. The most astonishing achievement is his ability to make such horrific villains, such truly amoral bastards as the main characters of these stories seem almost sympathetic.



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Even His Name Is Forgettable

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I have, at this point, gone through the first nine of this collection of twelve stories, and I am now fully convinced that Chesterton was not only a man of a brilliant mind, but of a very singular mind. His paradox is well known, his way of looking at things in an entirely novel light, his self-deprecation, his humor and wit and sheer genius are all legendary, but these stories are a glimpse into the workings of his mind when he decided to amuse himself with a train of thought, and are fascinating.



They are mysteries, a la Sherlock Holmes, but the protagonist is a small, unremarkable priest with a tremendous knowledge of the depths of human nature and an almost obtuse optimism that, combined with the sacred and private nature of confession, allows him not only to solve the crime but to save the criminal. As character studies, they are astonishing. I once commented of a Cormac McCarthy novel that I had met half of his characters. The same and often more is true of these: not only have I met these characters, these lovable cynics, tunnel-visioned atheists and abstruse agnostics, but I have been and am them more often than I would care to admit.



And the crimes? The crimes committed are fantastic, impossible; crimes that defy every imagination's attempts to reconcile them with reality save that singular mind of Chesterton's which can see in reality nothing but the fantastic and impossible, and thusly marries the two with uncanny ease. This has several times caused me to utter ejaculations with a sound, as Wodehouse puts it, of Chesterton falling on a sheet of tin, due to the incurably shy simplicity that would reveal itself to none but the silent, forgotten Priest who courts truth as a lover.



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LibriVox

I work nights, and it's not the kind of job that allows you to sit and read. Most of the time I'm either in uncomfortably close proximity to bodily excretions that bodies shouldn't be excreting, or explaining to doctors (with extremely complicated degrees that took more years of graduate level education than there are ants that I have personally named), doctors who are entrusted with the lives of otherwise intelligent people, why exactly the sign that says "Do Not Enter: Wet Wax" should also apply to them. So, no reading books. However, we are generally assumed to be misanthropic dysfunctional societal outcasts who take pleasure in causing pain to the daywalkers (it's only fair), so we are encouraged to listen to iPods, partly out of hope that the brain radiation will kill us off, and partly out of hope that listening to the entirety of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier without stopping will make us better people.

However, there is a delightful sight called "booksshouldbefree," which is comprised of free public domain audiobooks. These can be downloaded onto a computer and then an iPod, but I only just figured out how to download more than the first episode in each series. So, I will very soon be finishing and reviewing Club of Queer Trades, Innocence of Father Brown, Ball and the Cross, Alarms and Discursions, All Things Considered, The Defendant, Eugenics and Other Evils, Flying Inn, George Bernard Shaw, Heretics, Lord Kitchener, The Man Who Knew Too Much, Miscellaneous Essays, Miscellany of Men, Napoleon of Notting Hill, The New Jerusalem, Trees of Pride, and Tremendous Trifles, and I'd just like to comment that this list would make Kate Ligon very happy.

So, more reviews coming soon.

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Post # 1
by Jesse Broussard on Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 7:11pm
I'm afraid that this punctuality on my part may begin to raise unreasonable expectations in the few that read these notes. It won't usually be this way, but here you are.

First off, thanks enormously to all that responded--my gratitude is real. And Lance, I'm sure there's a hammer in the garage.

The text:

John 5:24-30 (all are spoken by Christ)

Jhn 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
Jhn 5:25 Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live.
Jhn 5:26 For as the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself;
Jhn 5:27 And hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man.
Jhn 5:28 Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice,
Jhn 5:29 And shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation.
Jhn 5:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

First, please keep in mind that I'm playing devil's advocate. I agree with you, David, that complete pantelism is complete heresy. I'm simply trying to defend that heresy from Scripture. Second, this time my drink is a dark brown, and out of sympathy for Lance's attention span, there shall be no third.

Initially, I found this passage quite difficult to defend from a hyper-preterist position (that all prophecy has been fulfilled), and I thought that my excursion into the delightful world of the damned had come to an abrupt end.

However, it can fit without any real strain.

The passage is a progression: 24 is past tense, 25 is present, and 28-29 are future. I think we can all agree that 24 is speaking of spiritual death. 25 appears to be speaking of spiritual death as well, simply extending the previous verse. But the chiastic mirrors of these verses, 28 and 29, seem to necessitate a future, possibly physical, resurrection of the dead, and if this verse has not been fulfilled, then pantelism is refuted.

However, could this verse not be referring to 1 Peter 3:18-19?

1Pe 3:18 For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit:
1Pe 3:19 By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison...

And, as the only referent of these verses are the "ἀπειθήσασιν," the disobedient spirits, we may further appeal to Ephesians 4:8-9:

Eph 4:8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.
Eph 4:9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

We know that Christ descended into Hell and made a public spectacle of those fallen angels who opposed Him (Col. 2:15), preached to those that disobeyed Him (at least in the time of Noah), and ascended into heaven with "captives in His train" (which would obviously be the righteous, leaving the unrighteous behind to their damnation).

During the time of Christ on earth, those in the graves heard His voice, and the good were raised to the resurrection of life while the damned were left behind. We may easily apply this to John 5:28-30.



Next weeks scheduled refutations are 1 Corinthians 15:23-24 and my favorite verse of all time, 1 John 3:2.

Blessings all,
Jesse Broussard

Cause Russell Has an Awesome Prophet's Beard

My reader (or readers; lets be optimistic) may be aware that I come from a charismatic background. This is the type of background that generally gives the impression that if Christ hasn't returned by the time the minister makes it to the front of the church, we'll all be very surprised. Indeed, as Lance would usually practice his sermon in the car on the way to church, I feel relatively certain that there were times he could have expressed a deep and personal longing for the Blessed Event, and while he was walking up to the front and the Advent proved to be indefinitely delayed, I feel equally certain that he experienced a deepening knowledge of the Personality of God, a knowledge not necessarily inconsistent with expletives.

Well, in the similar growth in my understanding, I now believe that many of the verses I had applied to the Second Coming actually should have been applied to the first Advent of Christ, and His judgment upon Jerusalem in AD 70. Herein lies the crux: which of these verses apply to the past and which to the future return of our Lord? There is safety in a multitude of counsel, and the Christian Church has historically held to a future return of Christ, which will be accompanied by a bodily resurrection and the one great hope of every Christian, given to us by John the Revelator in 1. John 3, that when Christ is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He Is. Because of this, denying a future return of Christ is not an option. So, I got a book written by someone with my particular predicament in mind, and here we are. Or at least here I am, drinking a ridiculously overpriced drink that George Harrell informs me is not pink, but fuscia (which I would have guessed to be in the fauna division of God's creation) while mooching the internet in the only coffee shop/public house named after a reformer who claimed that his greatest aim and failure in life was to teach John Calvin to tell a joke.

It is my aim to go through C. Jonathin Seraiah's book, The End of All Things: A Defense of the Future--which I already am favorably disposed toward, what with its black cover, Hieronymus Bosch-esque painting on the front, foreword by R.C. Sproul Jr, and Seraiah's acknowledgment to the unfortunate soul that spent so much time fixing the demon-spawn computer from the abyss--it is my aim to go through this book attempting to maintain the heretical position, that there is no future advent of Christ, against all of his arguments. I expect several future posts to be devoted to this purpose.


(If the Lord should tarry.)

Answers in an Hour,

if you went to public school.

Why the End is Not Near by Duane Garner

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Well, I was greatly torn between giving a three and a four star review. For its intended audience, this book is excellent. If you have questions, this book will not be the one to answer them. If you are debating the exact meaning of a particular verse, this book will be of absolutely no use. If, however, you are looking for a brief summary of the general views of dispensational premillennialism over and against other views, this is a magnificent book.



Not only is it quite good for what it is, but the reason it got a four-star review from me is that it introduced two new arguments to me, which was delightful. It also had numerous commonplaces, which I thoroughly enjoyed. To top that off, it took me a total of fifteen minutes to read, and the new arguments were very simple and practical.



So, a very worthwhile read: quite enjoyable, informative and intelligently written.



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More John Chapter Two

In reading my most recent post, I realized that I entirely failed to say the one thing that is the most interesting about the literary structure of the passage, and that my absolute love for the genius of John may, as a result, not have been quite so infectious as it ought to be. I'm naming all of my kids after John (especially Mordecai and Judah). He is absolutely amazing, and here is why.

The entire point of a chiasm is to focus a story around a single, central point. Everything else in the story serves to buttress and flesh out that one point. The entire point of a miracle is the event: the natural before the event and the natural after the event are bridged by this one tremendous act that violates all "laws" that the universe abides by: the blind man is not extraordinary, and neither is the seeing man. The extraordinary fact is that it's the same man. The tremendous and unnatural event is what connects the two, the hungry people with no food to the full people with twelve extra baskets; the dead girl and the teenager needing to be fed; the cripple and the man carrying his stretcher home.

In this passage, both are missing: the chiasm has no point, and there is no miracle. The miracle would occur between verses seven and eight of chapter two, but it doesn't. They pour water into the pots, and they draw wine out of it. The center of the chiasm is right between these same verses, but it isn't there. It is exactly as if there is one verse omitted from the absolute center of the story, as if some disillusioned monk decided to have a bit of fun with the next twenty thousand years of Biblical scholarship by removing the entire point of the story.

But, the omission is clean, neat, and entirely intentional. The point of the story? The point of the story is that there isn't one. And this is why I love John.

The John Cometh Into Chapter Two

I'm no longer even going to defend these chiasms; I'm just going to toss them out there.

The end of verse 43: "follow me" is the center of 35-51, but also of 34-51, which ties this section to all of the ones before it, in the following general manner:

A
B
C
D
C'
B'
A'/A
B
C
D
C'
B'
A'

where verse 34 is both A' and A.

Then, in chapter 2, I'm having difficulty pinning down an exact center, which gives me tons of stuff to work with.

One and two correspond exactly to eleven and twelve, which could simply indicate an inclusio. However, verse three's "wine" and verse ten's "wine" correspond too clearly to simply be accidental, especially with all the chiasms we've had so far. Then it starts to get interesting.

I would postulate that the mother speaking to Jesus about wine is equivalent to the master of the feast speaking to the bridegroom about wine. If you grant this, it's loads of fun. Then you have servants in five and servants in nine, the water of verses six and nine, and the actual ambiguity of the miracle being the center. If you really want, you can try to make 7a correspond to 8, but 7b and 8b correspond too well to make 7b the chiastic center. Both verses are the center, making this an

a
b
c
c'
b'
a'

type of chiasm, with the actual center occurring offstage: the waterpots are filled with water, wine is drawn out. The miracle has to have occurred between these, but it's hidden from us, and it's the point of the entire thing. So ponder this: why is it hidden? Why doesn't John simply tell us what happened? What is the significance of this?

Isn't this fun?

However, this is just the structural skeleton: the muscular ramifications are where it gets really fun, and those I will largely leave to you. I am simply demonstrating the door; you get to walk through it, as there is an infinite amount of material in the room, and what would mean a great deal to you would mean nothing to me, and vice versa.

However, I will give you a few things to note: 1). Christ = bridegroom, and He Is one that never will run out of wine. 2). The water was what they washed in to become clean, and it became what filled them to make them clean (wine always equates to the Spirit) in a very simple Old/New, Type/Antitype, Shadow/Fulfillment relationship. And 3). It was good, good wine.

Blessings,
Jesse Broussard

"Such a Dinner as Makes Me...

more than ever anxious for the collapse of Civilization As We Know It."


Ah, Rumpole

The First Rumpole Omnibus by John Mortimer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This was absolutely glorious. Just delightful.

"As I always say, murder is nothing more than common assault, with unfortunate consequences."
"He stands up with all the eager self-confidence of a rabbit with a retiring disposition caught in the headlights of an oncoming car."
"so that the unfortunate Guthrie often arrived at Chambers looking less like a suave and successful Q.C... than a man who spends his nights watching over a dynamite factory in which all the employees are allowed to smoke."
"It was rather as if a heretic, dragged before the Inquisition, had been told he'd just won a holiday in the Bahamas."

Mortimer is obviously deeply influenced by Wodehouse, and his Rumpole--short, fat, careless with money, conjoined half in war, half wedlock with She Who Must Be Obeyed (in which relationship there actually is a profound affection built out of security that we catch glimpses of), always spouting poetry, always defending and saying, "there, but for the grace of God, goes Rumpole"--his Rumpole, seems actually to be a character with deep, Christian virtues (hear me out). He is not a superficial Christian--he is not even a Christian, I don't think--as Soapy Sam Ballard is a superficial Christian, and he revolts against the hypocrisy of such a life. His life, however, is one of fierce grace: he always defends, he never pleads guilty, and he fights tooth and nail to give his (often villainous) clients a second chance at life. He has a thorough terror and loathing of ever condemning, which is rooted deeply enough to prevent his career from ever advancing, and his love of life (Pomeroy's "Chateau Fleet Street" Claret, small cigars, roaring fire and great poetry) are as deeply Puritanical (in the early, teach your dog to knock the hats off of bishops, delight in beer and making love to your wife manner of Puritans) as we could ever hope to emulate. This, combined with his wry cynicism, distaste of judges, Holmes-like intelligence and Wilde-like wit, and his deep knowledge of human nature that doesn't displace his compassion for people, make him one of my all-time favorite literary characters. The fact that he quotes poetry that I don't know doesn't hurt.

All in all, I am developing a deep and lasting affection for the brilliant, fat, British barrister, and would strongly advise anyone else to do the same.



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St. Francis of A Ninny?

St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I have one tremendous criticism to make of this book. If you have some perfectly good, bitter resentment towards the Franciscans (entirely legitimate), or towards St. Francis himself, or even the Jongleurs de Dieu, this book will take that exquisite resentment and turn it into an entirely unsatisfactory mushy benevolent feeling.

Another of Chesterton's brilliant works. Frederick Buechner once fondly criticized Chesterton with the comment that he'd written entirely too much for all of it to be excellent. I can sympathize, so long as I mention the fact that I've not yet found any of his "less than excellent" work. This book was delightful, short, and densely packed--the written version of a small piece of extremely rich cheesecake. One of the lines that stuck with me: "He could only be tempted by a sacrament."

However, being Chesterton, it does have the one typical criticism (other than making other writers boring), that the tremendously fat Catholic lightly leaps from topic to topic like the mountain goat from crag to crag, or the Hollywood star from blonde to blonde, and we end up not really knowing a whole lot more about St. Francis. But who reads books by Chesterton in order to learn about some narrow topic? You might as well hike solely in order to lose weight, or make love to your wife for the sole purpose of manufacturing babies, ignoring all of the pleasure to be gained from how delightful God made the path.



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Elise

None of mine are ever finished, but here are a few in various stages of modification. All suggestions are welcomed; most are ignored. Some of my loyal (and doubtlessly dozing) readers know the topics, but to the ignorant masses (if two can be called a mass): Gizmo is a tortoise-shell kitten that shall eternally be a kitten, no matter how old she gets. Elise I shall not explain: if you know, good; if not, better.

Most of my poems read best if you're slightly drunk (or have your eyes closed), but feel free to endure these, should you so desire.



Gizmo's Eve

A boneless, purring Pollock in a cooling pool of light;
marcescent day, marasmic sun, Undomiel Evenstar within
the guarded, growing dark. Beneath, vino del mar
has dauncing myrfolk drunk: dream through the dawn of night.



Engraving Hearts and Stone

“I know not why, why lovers, lovers die.”
Thus, Lewis’ angel, spying mortals, longs
to taste the cup (caressed by envious eye)
of pain, while we? We’re screaming mordant songs
of loves undone to never be regained,
“That long disease, our life”—a damned blockade
of raging death, affections merely feigned—
yes, gladly with the angel we would trade.
Yet, what means water to a sated earth?
And what, to those who cannot die, is life?
The brightest buds are those that bloom in dearth.
Thus, joy and pain, conjoined within my wife—
who sweetly smiled while ragged on the rack—
wrought more on earth than just her granite plaque.




Elise

12.20.10

Her eyes were as leaves in the late autumn air;
her eyes sank with sun to the sea
as the maiden, she watched with a watchmaker’s care
and God gave to her no one but me.

Alone of the world the wood-maiden’s thrall.
“The rose had the look of a flower”
but a flower unlooked, the wall
high-built about her bower.

“The world around has little ruth,”
too well her soul now knows,
a lovely maid who has not youth:
a sea of unspoiled snow.

Yet love has grown and has not died
through birth and death and birth—
bodies, seeds and loves denied
she’s planted in the earth.

Her eyes are as leaves in the late April air,
her love is a seed under snow,
and the girl will not watch with a gardener’s care,
for God shall make it grow.

Sorry Jethro

I'm apologizing. New posts shall be forthcoming; I just finished the last Rumpole that our library offers, then followed it up with a nice big chunk of Wodehouse, neither of which shall I insult with a review of my own. Suffice to say, read Wodehouse and Mortimer every chance you get. Mortimer is a later author, and was strongly influenced by Wodehouse, but tends to be slightly more substantive if a great deal less humorous.

Blessings,
JB

Snatch From His Hand the Balance and the Rod,

I'm introducing a poem written by Jonathan Ashbach, inspired by Milton, with a segment of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man. Cause I feel like it.




Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense
Weigh thy opinion against Providence;
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such;
Say, here he gives too little, there too much;
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust,
Yet cry, if man's unhappy, God's unjust;
If man alone engross not Heav'n's high care,
Alone made perfect here, immortal there:
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice, be the god of God.
In pride, in reas'ning pride, our error lies;
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies!
Pride still is aiming at the bless'd abodes,
Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods.
Aspiring to be Gods if Angels fell,
Aspiring to be Angels men rebel...
























Abdiel
by Jonathan Ashbach

Ten thousand angry hosts of hosts
Sure ranks of vicious peers
The shining angel compass round
Encroaching on him while the sound
Of heav’nly arrows raging round
Comes winging to his ears.

His brothers on him press all in,
The tarnished angels hurry near
And thunders to and fro are thrown
And swords of heaven meet his own
While horns as old as God are blown
Yet none of them he fears.

Yet suddenly the tumult stills;
The violent host is awed.
The thronging armies all give way
And yet they yield not him the day,
For on is coming, so they say,
Their captain and their god.

Dread liege of darkness great
Lord Lucifer the proud
Advances ‘mongst his serried friends.
Dark is his face; dark are his ends
And evil are the words he sends
While shouts he thus aloud.

“Dost thou alone, poor Abdiel
Dost thou alone remain?
True to the hea’nly potentate
Who gives us being, makes us great
And makes us serve with sugared hate
To luminate his reign?

“Thou fool,” cried Satan “Fool to stand,
Against thy brothers gathered here
Who shake their fists at tyranny
And rise aloft, nor bend the knee.
But serve thy master! art thou free?
Should slavery endure?

“For freedom shouldst thou give thy strength,
Not serve the master’s law.
One third of heaven claims its right;
The others soon will join our fight
And make the great king feel our might
And taste our puissance raw!

“No more shall we the Tyrant serve
Nor yet the Tyrant’s son.
But each in heav’n shall have a say
By our joint counsel make our way
And all made equal, thus today
My kingdom is begun!

“My seat shall be the utmost north
Above the stars of God.
The congregation has begun
To worship me, the morning’s son
Who gives them freedom from the One
Who wrests from us our laud!”

Thus spake the Seraph, haughty, proud
As seated on a throne
And his hosts gan roar and cry aloud
And down before him they all bowed
And Satan, worshiped by the crowd
Named Abdiel his own.

Not flinched mighty Abdiel,
But met the traitor’s eye
And stood celestial, silent power
Met Satan’s gaze by hour and hour
Until the prince did shake and cower
Beneath the azure sky.

Then answered mighty Abdiel
And he leaned upon his sword
Which flashed like lightening near and far
That the rebels gathered as for war
Each soon to be a fallen star
Might tremble at his word.

“Cursed be thou, once lord of light
Who stood before the Father’s throne
And falsely praised the tripart name,
That name above each earthly name
Proclaimed its everlasting fame
Of which thou now dost moan.

“Thou prince of heaven were, might be,
Yet to be rebel, traitor chose.
For God would have thee as a son
Yet thou wouldst be the only one,
Wouldst see the will of God undone
Lest primacy you loose.

“You see the glory of our God
Yet worship not the same,
But covet God’s eternal right
And think to try the maker’s might
Who gives you being by his light
Sustains you by His name.

How can you ask what right has right?
How try your strength on God?
Will you master his infinity?
Make the maker bend to you on knee?
Tame him whose slightest work you be?
Break the world-dashing rod?

“Thus hear the doom of heaven sure:
Your wish th’Almighty fills.
Thou art the crown, the cornerstone
The king eternal on thy throne.
None equal thee; thou art alone
Your place is that you will.

Yet God is good, and God alone
And you, without Him must,
A lord of heaven cease to be
Nor heaven’s good may build, may see
By your free will, good is to thee
As evil is to us.

“The chains you broke were chains of God
Full light; not willful bound.
From service to good thou hast been set free;
From the path of right he has given thee
Your choice of faith or liberty
And the morning star fell down.

“Your throne is pinnacled on ill;
You kingdom is corrupt.
Cast down from heaven into hell
By your own magic, your own spell
You’ll drink the dregs of your own well
With which you’ve filled your cup.

Then know your maker, know his wrath;
When the Day of Judgment comes!
God sees your heart; he knows your thought;
For Heaven’s books your name he blots.
What is not good shall soon be naught.
Go, then, to your new home!”

Thus spoke the seraph, and he turned
And strode swift from their seat.
None dared oppose him, blocked his path
But sat amazed, awaiting wrath.
Yet none returned, nor ever hath
And God hurled them forth to the deep.

For of the Bailey

Rumpole was.

A delightful quote from John Mortimer's (who is a British author comparable to a slightly more serious and less talented Wodehouse) "Rumpole of the Bailey" shall follow, but first, a bit of background. Rumpole is a short, fat, brilliant barrister (lawyer, to a Brit) who chain smokes cigars, quotes poetry (especially Wordsworth), swills claret, never pleads guilty and never prosecutes--and never asks if his client is guilty, lest they say yes. He is as cynical, jovial and witty a character as you could hope to meet. He also refers to his wife as "She Who Must Be Obeyed."

While standing before a judge in a libel suit, he is cross-examining a smarmy female author of romantic historical fiction of the most sappy and sentimental type. He has already mentioned that the hardest part of preparing for his case was having to read through--rather, endure--some of her books, and he has commented to a friend of his that it is simply inconceivable for someone who writes such terrible prose not to have some other serious faults, so we can understand what type of author this is.

Anyway, he asks the judge, a major fan of Ms. Nettleship, our authoress, for permission to read a section from one of her books. The judge, delighted, settles back and says, "Oh, yes. Isn't that the one that ends happily?" To which Rumpole responds, "Happily all Ms. Nettleship's books end... eventually."

In another story, he is defending a liberal minister from an adultery charge (he was innocent), and meets the loud, ill behaved and extremely combative children--they are always attacking each other with whatever weapons lie to hand--of said minister. What are their names? Martin and Erasmus.

I like Rumpole.

We Should Not Give Our Sons a Stone

To A Thousand Generations by Douglas Wilson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


This book is essential. God says "suffer the little children to come unto me," and we say "as soon as they make a confession of faith." God says, "unless ye become as little children," and we say, "unless you little children become like adults..." Again and again we turn the Gospel on its head, and nowhere is this more prevalent than in our covenantal unfaithfulness. We rail against the new Molech embodied in the abomination of abortion, even as we Spiritually starve our own children. This book is an essential read for any Christian who has or may have children.

No, baptism does not de facto save. No, it does not remove parental obligation: on the contrary, it increases it. But neither does our sinful lack of faith abrogate the eternal promises of God, the promises that we refuse to accept.



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