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The Donkey~ G.K. CHESTERTONWhen fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still.Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

To many people history is a pain they’ll never soothe. Since knowledge of events from long ago might contradict their feelings and passions, it is best left alone, shunned, and ignored. Besides, we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for, right? Why bother with the dead hand of the past? History can hurt us emotionally, so set it aside like handsome shoes that pinch, shoes that are too good and fashionable to throw away, but end up collecting dust on the closet floor. The Thing about history is that it subtly questions what we do today. It educates Socratically; it doesn’t...

A house in England where famed Christian thinker and writer G.K. Chesterton used to live could be demolished and replaced with apartments if it's not saved.Octagon Developments, Ltd recently applied for permission to demolish the Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire home, known as Overroads. A decision about the property's future is expected later this month.The Beaconsfield Society, the residents’ society formed in the 1960s with the goal of preserving the area’s past, told The Christian Post that "two applications have been submitted to the council" requesting permission to build on the site. "The first is for permission to build nine apartments,” the...

What were they thinking? Long ago, G.K. Chesterton wrote how easily, or with apparent ease, societies discard beneficial practices and institutions without knowing two things. Why was the practice or institution was the way it was, and second, without considering, without reasoning the subsequent effects of change? Nobody has any business destroying an institution until he examines it from a historical perspective.1 Regular readers know my disdain for the 17th Amendment and its awful accumulated consequences. Yes, there was a building consensus in favor of popularly elected senators and in 1913 congress headed off a convention of the states. While...

I was recently asked my opinion about the current state of affairs, and thought some of you might be interested. Or not. ===================================================== Hi Cousin You asked my thoughts about Paris, so here they are. What we are seeing is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash between civilization and barbarism. Paris is but the latest consequence of The West 1) failing to recognize/address barbarism, and 2) losing faith in civilization itself. In short, Paris is the well-deserved consequence of The West's aggregate contempt for its own Christian heritage. G.K. Chesterton once said that when a people no...

One of the pressing issues of Chesterton’s time was “birth control.” He not only objected to the idea, he objected to the very term because it meant the opposite of what it said. It meant no birth and no control. I can only imagine he would have the same objections about “gay marriage.” The idea is wrong, but so is the name. It is not gay and it is not marriage. Chesterton was so consistently right in his pronouncements and prophecies because he understood that anything that attacked the family was bad for society. That is why he spoke out...

Churches that accept society’s dogma on marriage and sexuality may think of themselves as “affirming,” but the global church sees them as “apostate.” Meanwhile, it is the height of imperialistic narrowness for a rapidly shrinking subset of white churches in the West to lecture the rest of the world — including those places where Christianity is exploding in growth or where Christians are being martyred — on why they are wrong and how everyone else in Christian history has misread Scripture regarding the meaning of marriage. (RNS) Whenever people today say that Christianity needs to update and adapt its moral...

“Discuss in the dark” Suppose that a great commotion arises in the street about something, let us say a lamp-post, which many influential persons desire to pull down. A grey-clad monk, who is the spirit of the Middle Ages, is approached upon the matter, and begins to say, in the arid manner of the Schoolmen, “Let us first of all consider, my brethren, the value of Light. If Light be in itself good–” At this point he is somewhat excusably knocked down. All the people make a rush for the lamp-post, the lamp-post is down in ten minutes, and they...

JRR Tolkien in 1967 (Photo: PA) Books blog: Dr Holly Ordway's Not God's Type recounts a fascinating and uplifting journeyI have been reading Dr Holly OrdwayÂ’s Not GodÂ’s Type: an Atheist Academic Lays Down her Arms (Ignatius Press, or Gracewing in the UK). It is always uplifting to read books like this, not in a triumphalist way but because it is a reminder that underneath all the glaring human weaknesses in the Church as an institution, which we all know so well, there are still people out there who are searching for answers to fundamental questions and then finding...

He was called the “Father of Jesus Rock.” Everyone who was an Evangelical or Pentecostal Christian in the 1970s knew who he was. He wrote such songs as “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” “U.F.O.,” “One Way,” “I Am a Servant,” and “Righteous Rocker, Holy Roller.” He was the one who lamented playfully, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” He had brilliant lyrical and musical gifts. He could hold audiences in the palm of his hand, easily making them roll with laughter, rock with praise, or be quiet and thoughtful.His name was Larry Norman — and he...

Yesterday’s dark fantasy is now coming to pass Exactly one century ago, the renowned British writer G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), called by his admirers the greatest writer and thinker of the 20th century, published a curious novel titled “The Flying Inn.” On the cusp of World War I, he imagined the Ottoman Empire conquering Great Britain and imposing Shariah law. Chesterton rides this implausible scenario as a vehicle to ridicule progressivism — that same arrogant, “scientific,” top-down, and leftist approach to government that characterizes the age of Obama. “The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes,” Chesterton rightly explained,...

Author G. K. Chesterton, best known for his Father Brown stories, has been put on the path to sainthood – with the blessing of the Pope. Just days before he was elected Pope in March, the then Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, wrote to a Chesterton society in Argentina approving the wording of a private prayer calling for his canonisation. The Pontiff is said to be a fan of the author, one of whose most admired books was a life of St Francis of Assisi – whose name the Pope adopted.

Who Dares Attack My Chesterton? OpinionJune 4th, 2012 Zac Alstin The late Christopher Hitchens  It is a cliché of pop psychology that we are least able to tolerate people who remind us of our own selves. There’s only room for one Life Of The Party and we feel a twinge of antagonism toward anyone whose excellence threatens to outshine our own. I was reminded of this when I read Christopher Hitchens’ posthumously published review of a biography of the great British journalist G.K. Chesterton. It certainly was a curious valediction. As an obituary for Hitchens described: “Consider the mix. Constant pain, weak as...

The celebrated British apologist and essayist, G.K. Chesterton, had a good friend, Hilaire Belloc, who is now largely forgotten, but whose fame in his day caused George Bernard Shaw to refer to the pair as the “Chesterbelloc.” Among his many interests (such as writing a Foreword to a collection of P.G. Wodehouse short stories!), Belloc wrote a number of books and articles on the subject of economics. One of his most intriguing works was a book entitled The Servile State. In this book, written before the fall of the Russian Tsar and the rise of the Bolsheviks in Russia, Belloc...

This message titled "Secularization: It's Power and Control" from the Ravi Zacharias International Ministries parts: (1 2 3 4) is rather brilliant in the examples cited and in it's construction. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In this particular segment, Ravi Zacharias elaborates on a writing from G K Chesterton regarding revolutionists and contradiction. I will be clipping several pieces of this message over the next couple of days and commenting on them, as there are several very deep and thoughtful things in this that we can all learn from, in defending ourselves from progressivism. It needs to be noted...

NEW YORK — Can an Anglican theologian from Britain revive an 80-year-old Catholic social justice theory and provide a solution to America’s economic woes and political polarization? Philosopher and political thinker Phillip Blond thinks so, and he’s giving it everything he’s got. Blond, who has been a counselor to British Prime Minister David Cameron, just wrapped up a two-week U.S. tour to pitch his retooled version of “distributism,” a theory that argues that both capitalism and government are out of control. In that sense, the thinking goes, both Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are right...

CHESTERTONIANS!!! Join us for the 30th Annual G.K. Chesterton Conference “Poet and Prophet” August 4-6, 2011 Sheraton Westport Plaza St. Louis, Missouri THURSDAY, AUGUST 4 7 pm Welcome Dale Ahlquist (President of the American Chesterton Society) The Poetic Prophet, The Prophetic Poet 8:30 pm Christopher Check (Executive Vice President of the Rockford Institute) Lepanto: The Battle and the Poem FRIDAY, AUGUST 5 9 am Carl Hasler (Professor of Philosophy at Collin College) Chesterton: A Franciscan Thomist? 10:30 am Robert Moore-Jumonville (Professor of Religion at Spring Arbor University and columnist for Gilbert Magazine) Paying Attention: The Poetry of Prayer. 1 pm...

'Tomorrow's Children' (1934) which was called 'The Unborn' in the UK This was a very controversial film in its day. It was made during the height of the eugenics movement and considered subversive at the time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSqUnqoHRFs Part I of 6

How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House How the Great Wind Came to Beacon House | G. K. Chesterton | Chapter One of Manalive | Ignatius Insight A wind sprang high in the west, like a wave of unreasonable happiness, and tore eastward across England, trailing with it the frosty scent of forests and the cold intoxication of the sea. In a million holes and corners it refreshed a man like a flagon, and astonished him like a blow. In the inmost chambers of intricate and embowered houses it woke like a domestic explosion, littering the floor with some...

When then-Sen. Barack Obama made a short video for the "peace caucus" delegates to the 2008 Iowa Caucuses, he captured the enthusiastic support of his party's pacifist wing. It was enough to propel him to the Democratic nomination. Hillary Clinton's ad -- showing a red telephone ringing at 3 a.m. -- only emphasized to party pacifists that Obama was their man. And, of course, leading antiwar figures like George Soros heavily bankrolled MoveOn.org and other liberal media outlets -- all echoing the same pacifist line. Pacifism -- as the name implies -- ought to lead to peace. But it too...