A basketball in speedos

Much as I was intending to write about Enmegahbowh - the mid-nineteenth century Native America priest and missionary - the discovery of a basketball in speedos in my basement (and photoshopped onto a more exotic location here) is leading me to GK Chesterton.

On a foray into Barnes and Nobel a while back I came across a book called "What is wrong with the world" by Chesterton - I had not read much until the other day when I grabbed it out of the car to sit in a waiting room with. In amongst some rather old fashioned thoughts I found some very enlightening ones.

For example, he argues that society and the rules of convention, exist to pull us through the mundane parts of life. Marriage is the example he quotes - that after the honeymoon period there is a settling and during this, if there were no rules, it would be easy to stray. Everything which is worth something he says is going to cause some discomfort, adjustment and boredom and to get to the settled part of marriage one needs discipline to put aside the heady first days and find something more enduring.

I am still processing these thoughts but it is certainly true that we subject ourselves to discipline in our lives - and especially in our Christian lives. This discipline will indeed pull us through tough times, and to a degree counteract our tendancy to give in to bored urges.

Why the basketball in speedos? Because he also hammers on about everyone having a house, a place where they can wear pyjamas in the daytime and eat dinner on the floor if they so please. His halcyon vision of houses and yards for all is beyond our current population level but nevertheless it is true that if I wanted to take my basketball and stick it on a shelf in speedos than I can in my house.

Chesterton cannot be taken all together - there are somethings which do not work. But I hope he does not go out of favor - there is something in his writing which can teach us, even if it is by opposition.

I will finish with a verse from the Ballad of the White Horse - it is a long epic poem - terribly sentimental from an England which is very certain - but still there are subtleties which is would be easy to skate over - the prominence of the Virgin Mary is obvious but buried in the battle are these words:

"Or that before the red cock crow
All we, a thousand strong,
Go down the dark road to God's house,
Singing a Wessex song?

This to me (and I am not a literary scholar) speaks so much of betrayal and God's mercy - we cannot help but fall away and even wage terrible wars, but somehow between ourselves and our nationalism God'd heart remains open to us.