Monday, January 23, 2017

"Open" Thread ("Updated")

I expect normal blogging to resume tomorrow. Meanwhile, an open thread. Feel free to toss out ideas for topics and directions.

As things stand, we still have to finish our review of God's Gamble. Then there are some things in Chesterton as Mystic I'd like to discuss, in particular, some things that remind me of me.

Not that I remind myself of Chesterton, only that I'm always trying to figure out exactly what we're doing here, and the author provides some clues, for example, "I've seen something of Chesterton's personal library. I believe he read books on every conceivable subject.... One gets the impression he was precisely reading everything in order to harmonize everything of human culture into his faith vision."

Chesterton's wife "once asked him why he didn't write more about God." He replied, "I am always writing about God." So, yeah. Me too.

Also, Chesterton once remarked that "two worlds are better than one." Which points to another avenue we'll be exploring, which is to say, irony, which we will be trying to "harmonize" with our "faith vision," such that we might be able to integrate "God" and God.

******

Change in schedule -- early appointment. Blogging resumes tomorrow. Meanwhile, by overwhelming popular demand, a tableau from Saturday's march of the trite brigade:

9 comments:

julie said...

Okay, since it's an open thread: may I suggest you add the image of the skywriting of "Trump" over the shot of Dorothy & co. that you shared on Instapundit this weekend? Because that was hilarious.

I'm sure if it were tortured a bit, it could even serve as a graphic illustration of irony and faith visions somehow...

mushroom said...

Did anybody else find it odd that the organizer of the women's march is a hajib-wearing Muslim?

garyeureka said...

G.K. Chesterton’s “Saint Thomas Aquinas – The Dumb Ox” is on my lap as I read your open thread today, perhaps a sign to finally chime in after years of delightfully reading your blog and the thoughtful responses. Especially appropriate (and prophetic) is the phrase in Chapter 1, “. . . the twentieth century cannot as yet even manage to think itself anything but the age of uncommon nonsense.” Anyone care to name the 21st century’s even further decline from “uncommon nonsense” described by G.K over eighty years ago?

Gagdad Bob said...

FWIW, an even better intro to Aquinas is Josef Pieper's Silence of St. Thomas. Short but concentrated.

Anonymous said...

The Women's March was a puzzler for many of us. What exactly was the aim? After meditating on this for awhile, I feel the dialogue goes something like this:

"We don't trust you. We are watching you. Try anything funny and we can put a million people at your front door."

"Our pussies are nunya. Ain't grabbing this pussy."

Trump spoke out fearlessly into the Cosmos, and part of the response happened to be a mobile horde of women and like-minded men. Ya just never know.

Worldwide it was the largest coordinated group of gatherings ever recorded. So what will the historians say in 100? Depends on what happens in the next 8.

As far as Mushrooms observation an organizer was a "hajib wearing Muslim," I don't think there was any foreign nationalist aims attached to the event (if there were, it would reflect an implicit belief some result would come of it. Really? If so, what?) so this would be simple happenstance.

The word "venting" comes to mind as the overall causation. A lot of tension was built up in 2016 and tension must be released.

garyeureka said...

An example of Chesterton’s “two worlds” (perhaps not as mystical as you have in mind) may be in these stanzas from “The Ballad of the White Horse”. The story of King Alfred the Great, fending off the invading Vikings, is my favorite perhaps because it was my first G.K. read, the little book made even more significant by Chesterton’s personal bookplate, signed even.

Eldred in his hour . . . [before his death in battle]

“But while he moved like a massacre
He murmured as in sleep,
And his words were all of low hedges
And little fields and sheep.

Even as he strode like a pestilence
That strides from Rhine to Rome
He thought how tall his beans might be
If ever he got home.

Spoke some stiff piece of childish prayer,
Dull as the distance chimes,
And thanked our God for good eating
And corn and quiet times – “

Anonymous said...

Hi Garyeurka:

My moniker for the 21st Century is "The Century of Reconciliation." The last 500 years or was the "Age of Expansion," the ramifications of which have been culminating. The wild card is the singularity. I see the last 500 years funneling inexorably towards the birth of a new Phyla, "Mineralia." Or not....
However if it does happen, perhaps the persistent sensation of scarcity and want, with its attendant fears, will dissipate and a more relaxed age will dawn. The new pre-occupations will be inner and outer exploration. Another cycle of expansion.

We must shoulder past the preoccupations of the now and keep pushing the Tech. The Tech, I tell you, the Tech. That's The Thing.

julie said...

It's probably a bad thing that I see that set of pictures and want to cackle with glee.

Another great response would have been for men to show up wearing rooster hats. Probably wouldn't have ended well, though...

mushroom said...

It is funny. Rooster hats would be too triggering. It would be like The Stand, worse than the zombie apocalypse. Besides, the guys that would wear them all have jobs.

Re: "foreign nationals" in Anon's comment -- they are not the problem. It's the globalists. We are not "one world". I am afraid we are no longer one nation.

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