Great Wits is Oft to Madness Near Allied (Dryden)

Currently Reading:
Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton [?]

A couple of my friends are big G.K. Chesterton fans, so I eventually got around to reading some of his stuff. An amazing thinker and writer, although apparently he could barely read at age 9. When interviewed and asked which one book he would take should he be stranded on a desert island he replied: "Why, A Practical Guide to Ship Building of course". When the London Times asked a number of writers to reply on the question "What is wrong with the world?" Chesterton had by far the shortest reply:

Dear Sirs
I am.
Sincerely Yours,
G.K. Chesteron

Some other famous quotes are ?:

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried".

Standing between 300-400lbs Chesterton was deemed physically unfit for service in World War I. One time an elderley woman bluntly demanded "Why aren't you out at the front?" to which Chesterton replied "My dear madam, if you step round this way a little, you will see that I am."

The book Orthodoxy deals with Chesterton's defense of his philosophy and his faith. One idea that really struck me was Chesterton's discussion on logic versus mysticism. That is, the idea of trying to clearly understand everything in this world via logic, versus allowing and embracing the mystery and fantasy of our world.

This topic was of immediate interest to me. I am someone who has typically placed great value on thinking logically. My major and minor (computer science and philosophy, respectively) further cultivated that logical inclination. Chesterton brings up some stunning analogies showing the limitations, even the dangers, of the logical man who cannot accept the mystery/fantasy of the world. He argues that madmen aren't those who have lost their reason, but rather those who have lost all but their reason. It is mystery and mysticism that keeps a man sane and healthy Chesteron argues. One particuarly enjoyable section reads:

The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane beacuse it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion... To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everythign a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

THAT is an extremely interesting thought that I will have to brood on some more as I continue on in this book.

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Bending Over the Abyss

Solitude: the fine art of intentionally doing nothing for extended periods of time. As a Christian discipline, its understood as a way to separate yourself from the busyness and noisiness of this world. It is to be quietly still in God's presence, and through this quiet stillness, to actually be open to God's voice and presence. The world is a busy place, and we love the noise and activity. Have we considered the effect of that noise and activity on our ability to hear from, and respond to God?

Monks in ages past would literally flee society: literal solitude. Solitude will look different for us in our modern age, but the glaring importance of it remains.

A book I've currently been reading struck me as a moving reminder as to why we must continually seek God in the stillness of our hearts:

For inner silence depends on a continual seeking, a continual crying in the night, a repeated bending over the abyss. If we cling to a silence we think we have found forever, we stop seeking God and the silence goes dead within us. A silence in which He is no longer sought ceases to speak to us of Him. A silence from which He does not seem to be absent, dangerously threatens His continued presence. For He is found when He is sought and when He is no longer sought He escapes us. He is heard only when we hope to hear Him, and if, thinking our hope to be fulfilled, we cease to listen, He ceases to speak, His silence ceases to be vivid and becomes dead, even though we recharge it with the echo of our own emotional noise.

Thomas Merton
Thoughts in Solitude

The Christian faith is about a relationship, may we be ever attentive and ever vigilant.

See my books on solitude

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Life Together

Currently Reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer



My job actually has resparked my interest to be reading more, and when things are quiet I can get in a few chapters everyday which is nice. I had read Bonhoeffer's Cost of Discipleship (Link) and am finding Life Together to be an amazing book. Its about Christian community - what it really means to have fellowship and to live together as the body of Christ.

The book is incredibly packed. I've read the 20 page first section a couple times, and I feel that I have to reread it some more to really digest what Bonhoeffer is saying. I feel that in 20 pages he so clearly identifies our misconceptions about fellowship. I've been extremely challenged by it. I've been meaning to read more Bonhoeffer, but what really pushed me was noticing that Schloss Mittersill specifically listed the book as being influential in shaping how they do community life.

The accolades are impressive, Richard Foster, author of the staple The Celebration of Discipline (a fine book also) wrote this high praise: "Most books can be skimmed quickly; some deserve careful reading; a precious few should be devoured and digested. Life Together... belongs to the third category."

I have been debating what snippet of the book I ought to share with you all... perhaps the one on the forefront of my mind is Bonhoeffer distinguishing between human love and spiritual love:

Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake. Therefore, human love seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself. It wants to gain, to capture by every means; it uses force. It desires to be irresistible, to rule... Human love makes itself an end in itself. It creates of itself an end, an idol which it worships, to which it must subject everything. It nurses and cultivates an ideal, it loves itself, and nothing else in the world. Spiritual love, however, comes from Jesus Christ

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