Location: Classroom 2 or 3.

This month’s readings are from The Napoleon of Notting Hill, Book II, Chapters I, II, & III

And since we’re only 2 days away from the election, here is a short passage from Chesterton’s essay What is Right with the World:

For at present we all tend to one mistake; we tend to make politics too important. We tend to forget how huge a part of a man’s life is the same under a Sultan and a Senate, under Nero or St Louis. Daybreak is a never-ending glory, getting out of bed is a never-ending nuisance; food and friends will be welcomed; work and strangers must be accepted and endured; birds will go bedwards and children won’t, to the end of the last evening. And the worst peril is that in our just modern revolt against intolerable accidents we may have unsettled those things that alone make daily life tolerable. It will be an ironic tragedy if, when we have toiled to find rest, we find we are incurably restless. It will be sad if, when we have worked for our holiday, we find we have unlearnt everything but work. The typical modern man is the insane millionaire who has drudged to get money, and then finds he cannot enjoy even money. There is danger that the social reformer may silently and occultly develop some of the madness of the millionaire whom he denounces. He may find that he has learnt how to build playgrounds but forgotten how to play. He may agitate for peace and quiet, but only propagate his own mental agitation. In his long fight to get a slave a half-holiday he may angrily deny those ancient and natural things, the zest of being, the divinity of man, the sacredness of simple things, the health and humour of the earth, which alone make a half-holiday even half a holiday or a slave even half a man.

I’ve linked the essay so you can read the whole thing if you like. If time allows we will discuss it at our meeting. It is also the second to the last essay in the collection of GKC essays In Defense of Sanity.

Just one more thing (since once I get myself started, I have trouble stopping). Here’s a poem/prayer most of you will be familiar with. I’m thinking of it as a prayer for our nation in this time of national malevolence/insanity:

O God of earth and altar,

Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter,

Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us,

The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us,

But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches,

From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches

That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation

Of honour and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation,

Deliver us, good Lord.

Tie in a living tether

The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together,

Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation

Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation,

A single sword to thee.

“A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.”
– G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man