The Chesterton Club

Sorry for the lack of a post on Friday. Thursday night A-Joz, the Fabulous Jackie O, and I went to our condo association meeting and then out to dinner, so I was out kind of late. Then Friday I spent half the day participating in a research study. (It was, alas, not the one where the subjects had to sign the consent forms with magic pens.) So Friday I never got around to posting, and then Saturday I was nowhere near a computer. Instead, Richard Bonomo, Kathbert, and I were splashing through a creek with our shoes off, just like kids. After that we had root beer floats, just like kids. Then Hardingfele and Rockstar Tailor came over and we splashed around in my pool, just like kids. (Of course, Rockstar Tailor really IS a kid.)

Sunday at our church we had a visiting priest who was black and preached like those Baptist ministers you hear on the radio, only he was very eucharistic. We all wished he could be our priest forever. Then Rich, Anna Banana II, and I were at a picnic at a country church, and it was a cloudy day so I took my Famous Hat off and got kind of pink on the cheeks. One of the people at this picnic was a regular at the local Chesterton Club, which brings up the point of this post: everyone should read Chesterton. Why he is not more widely read these days is beyond me. He states everything with such clarity and points out the lack of logic in the most foolish modes of modern thinking. (Oh wait, maybe that's why they don't make you read him in school...)

The Chesterton Club meeting was on Saturday evening by the lake, which sounded wonderful, but I was exhausted after all that splashing around. Too bad, because sitting beside the lake on a warm summer evening, discussing Chesterton while drinking beer and watching one member smoke his ever-present pipe, sounded like a wonderful way to pass the time. In fact, one of the guys at the Chesterton Club, Mr. Icon, told the others a story (which Rich later related to me) about meeting an Egyptian at the zoo who had fallen in love with a tree and was sitting beneath it in ecstasy. Mr. Icon asked him what was up and he explained that trees are so rare in Egypt that they are each registered with the government. However, that doesn't explain why he fell in love with that particular Norway maple, since in my town there is a Norway maple every dozen feet or so, and not one of them is registered, so far as I know. See? This is what you are missing by not attending the Chesterton Club meetings!

Chesterton was, in his day, a well-known Christian apologist, and he had a series of public debates with George Bernard Shaw, the famous playwright and prominent atheist. When Chesterton converted to Catholicism, Shaw said, "Oh Gilbert, now you really HAVE gone too far!" But we in the Chesterton Club are grateful he went that far.

Famous Hat