Tolkien, Chesterton, Books, Beer...

First Things has a great little review of a book by Alison Milbank entitled Chesterton and Tolkien as Theologians: The Fantasy of the Real. I’ll include a short little excerpt from the review:

This final acclamation lies at the heart of Alison Milbank’s fine book. With clarity and wit and verve, she shows that the gift-quality of Tolkien’s and Chesterton’s art is premised on the gift-character of the universe itself. Their work, as she splendidly verifies, has profound moral implications. For in a gift-giving and gift-receiving world, we are not meant to seek our own advantage at the expense of others. Rather we are meant to create gifts—like those presents into which Galadriel has woven her own character before she gives them to the Company—that serve to free their recipients rather than putting them into our debt. Milbank has gifted us with what may well become our finest study of these Catholic artists in their unique relation not only to each other but also to our imagination-starved churches and culture.

As a huge fan and devourer of all things Tolkien and Chesterton, I’ll have to be adding this one to the wish list. My night table might collapse with all of the tomes sitting on deck.

Speaking of my night table, my current read is The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food. It has been a fantastic read, highlighting the history and qualities of just about every style of beer and how they work to enhance the foods you pair them with. Mr. Oliver is wonderful in his descriptions and I find myself constantly salivating as I read page after page of wonderful culinary combinations. Just the other night the wife and I cooked up a wonderful homemade soup and paired it with both freshly baked bread right out of the oven and an awesome Saison Dupont. This was my first experience with a Saison and I absolutely loved it. Each sip and bite was heaven. At only $7.00 for a large bottle (enough for 2), the Saison was a heck of a lot cheaper than a decent wine and the synergy between beer and food beats wine hands down in my book. By the way, the Saison goes with just about anything so pick up a bottle if you can find it in your neck of the woods and enjoy a great meal!

The Honor of Darlings

Bethlehem is emphatically a place where extremes meet. Here begins, it is needless to say, another mighty influence for the humanization of Christendom. If the world wanted what is called a non-controversial aspect of Christianity, it would probably select Christmas. Yet it is obviously bound up with what is supposed to be a controversial aspect (I could never at any stage of my opinions imagine why); the respect paid to the Blessed Virgin. When I was a boy a more Puritan generation objected to a statue upon my parish church representing the Virgin and Child. After much controversy, they compromised by taking away the Child. One would think that this was even more corrupted with Mariolatry, unless the mother was counted less dangerous when deprived of a sort of weapon. But the practical difficulty is also a parable. You cannot chip away the statue of a mother from all round that of a newborn child. You cannot suspend the new-born child in mid-air; indeed you cannot really have a statue of a newborn child at all. Similarly, you cannot suspend the idea of a newborn child in the void or think of him without thinking of his mother. You cannot visit the child without visiting the mother, you cannot in common human life approach the child except through the mother. If we are to think of Christ in this aspect at all, the other idea follows as it is followed in history. We must either leave Christ out of Christmas, or Christmas out of Christ, or we must admit, if only as we admit it in an old picture, that those holy heads are too near together for the haloes not to mingle and cross.

- From "The Everlasting Man" by G.K. Chesterton

I came across this fine quote in the comment box of another blog. I struggled a bit with Marian doctrine through college in the midst of my migration from Methodism to non-denominational evangelicalism. It was the typical knee-jerk reaction to the perceived Mariolatry in the Catholic Church, a deep fear of conflating creation with creator. When I began my journey towards Catholicism, I found that my previous struggles had mysteriously vanished, leaving only a deep respect for and honor towards the Mother of God. I can only conclude that this vanishing coincided with the mysterious revelation of family experienced by most new fathers at the birth of their children. Having been blessed by two beautiful daughters I have obtained a privileged glimpse of the profoundly beautiful bond shared by mother and child. While my joy was properly and necessarily saddled with the husbandly burdens of provision and protection, I have seen the sole burden of love pass between the eyes of my daughters and their mother. To reduce that ethereal connection to the simple act of a tool to bear the required earthly burden is to blaspheme the very nature of holy familial bonds. To cut Mary out of the Holy Family immediately after the birth of Christ is a grave occasion of the sin of dishonoring Motherhood.

If Christ reigns as the fulfillment of the Davidic Kings, what then are we to make of the role of the Davidic Queen? Are we to deny the role of the Queen, Mother of the King and advocate for the people, as an unnecessary expansion of the prophetic fulfillment achieved by Christ? Are we to deny that the New Adam came through the assent and obedience of the New Eve, crushing the serpent under her heel with that amazing look of love I now know so well? Are we so afraid of confusing honor with idolatry that we would conveniently remove the Mother of God from a now crippled image of the Holy Family?

I would hope, as in my own case, that this rift in those baptized in Christ would be healed not by intellectual or rational assent, but by a revelation of the iron-clad ties of motherhood to the life of a cherished child. I can’t in good conscience conveniently sideline Mary after seeing my darling girls in the arms of Mom. Maybe we don’t need more arguments, only more darling boys and girls honoring their Mother.

King Alfred's Dark Night

"The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
We do not guard our gold,
Men may uproot where worlds begin,
Or read the name of the nameless sin;
But if he fail or if he win
To no good man is told.

"The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.

"The men of the East may search the scrolls
For sure fates and fame,
But the men that drink the blood of God
Go singing to their shame.

"The wise men know what wicked things
Are written on the sky,
They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
Hearing the heavy purple wings,
Where the forgotten seraph kings
Still plot how God shall die.

"The wise men know all evil things
Under the twisted trees,
Where the perverse in pleasure pine
And men are weary of green wine
And sick of crimson seas.

"But you and all the kind of Christ
Are ignorant and brave,
And you have wars you hardly win
And souls you hardly save.

"I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.

"Night shall be thrice night over you,
And heaven an iron cope.
Do you have joy without a cause,
Yea, faith without a hope?"

So says the Blessed Mother to King Alfred in Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse. I can’t help but think that much of modern Christianity shudders at that last stanza – afraid of the dark night of the soul. One has only to look at the latest fascination with Mother Theresa to see the fear with which we view a so-called “empty” faith. The Blessed Mother neglects to inform good King Alfred as to the outcome of his trials, choosing simply to ask where his heart lies in the darkest night and highest seas. The faith of Left Behind is afraid of walking blithely into life. It is afraid of the unknowable future and must at all costs pin timeline and table to the unraveling life of Man. To know doubt is to taste death, and the bitter taste of death is only overcome by the signs of sky and scroll. But the One True Faith knows the taste of death is bittersweet, for the bitter blood of Christ is what sends us sweetly singing, uncertain and unafraid, into that dark night of the soul.