Short Wednesday June 22 2005

The Chesterton Conference ("One Hundred Years of Heretics") was great!

Old friends, new friends, and other delights - like going to Loome Books! Stratford Caldecott telling a joke about the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle. Mark Shea enumerating reasons why one ought not be Catholic - strangely reminiscent of GKC's list in Orthodoxy. Talking with Flying Stars author Nancy Brown! Lots of books. Father Jaki. Father Schall. And perhaps 300 Chestertonians!

Which makes one grateful for such a great gift.

Chesterton had a wonderful poem about this, which you ought to read:

"Eternities"

I cannot count the pebbles in the brook.
Well bath He spoken: 'Swear not by thy head,
Thou knowest not the hairs,' though He, we read,
Writes that wild number in His own strange book.

I cannot count the sands or search the seas,
Death cometh, and I leave so much untrod.
Grant my immortal aureole, O my God,
And I will name the leaves upon the trees.

In heaven I shall stand on gold and glass,
Still brooding earth's arithmetic to spell;
Or see the fading of the fires of hell
Ere I have thanked my God for all the grass.

[GKC, Collected Poems CW10:209]

And I am also thankful to be "there and back again" safely.