A Foolish Romance: Act I

For the better part of my life, people have been going around trying to make me feel I'm smart. Sometimes I humor them and let them say things to this effect, or even act the part. But the deep dark truth is...I'm a complete idiot.

For all the things I've let take up residence in the chasms between my ears, there isn't much to show. Demonstrations of this "knowledge" tend to terrify me (please refer to the secret chapter of my life entitled "How Many Papers I Actually Handed In In College"). They are not terrifying in and of themselves; the terrifying bit is the appealing abyss in which their contents tend to be tucked away among an infinite number of other intriguing items. Easy to get lost in.

I find myself constantly crippled by the things I've discovered, and in this mere quarter of a lifetime have accrued such a collection of debilitating concepts that I sometimes have to check and make sure my body hasn't atrophied as a result of the extensive adventures taken in this cerebral limbo. I am not very good at being a person, and even worse at being a godly person. The more I feel I should be improved by all the answers I've sought, the more holes I feel in my diminishing self, worn thin by the thousand more questions each answer breeds.

Comfort comes from dear unmet friends: mister Lewis, Paul...and now mister Chesterton. Brothers who have been to these same places and have realized the paradox of it all, who have resigned themselves to the fact that they are but foolish humans, destined to strive and fail in a world and a state that is unownably their own.

I've carried on into Chesterton's introduction, where he defines the thesis of his book as being a desire to "set forth [his] faith as particularly answering this double spiritual need, the need for that mixture of the familiar and the unfamiliar which Christendom has rightly named romance." He goes on to paint a picture of humanity's need for a "practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure...an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome."

Now, if you need to know anything about me, this is the one thing to know:
Paradox is my lifeblood. (Well..I mean, Christ is my lifeblood. But paradox comes in a close second. Or perhaps we could include it with Christ, because if we're being honest with ourselves, that whole thing is one epic paradox, right?)

So whenever someone gets going on paradox, I am a happy camper.

Anyways, you may be wondering if I'm planning on making this coherent at all, now that I've meandered between the topics of folly, romance, and paradox. Fear not! Although my writing skills have also atrophied (perhaps as a result of the aforementioned "secret chapter?" wink wink), I am determined to lead you out of this tangled path and back into the light! (Thank you for the small stroll into the edges of my favorite abyss, by the way--it's nice to have company from time to time.)

Ah yes, so. Sweet comfort comes, when I find myself most deliciously and tragically lost in the realms of the ultimately unknowable, from friends who have been there before me...who readily admit to me their utter inability to own any special knowledge at all and the weakness of their faltering pens...who so wisely abandon the knowledge others like to claim they've captured and who carry on down the fool's road toward the True Owner's Home.

Dear mister Chesterton, whose text is widely celebrated and used in college classrooms, offers us this impending work "with the heartiest sentiments to all the jolly people who hate what I write, and regard it (very justly, for all I know) as a piece of poor clowning or a single tiresome joke."

And my old friend Paul advises us well in the paradox of worldly wisdom and holy foolishness:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things--and the things that are not--to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God--that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."
(1 Cor. 1:18-31)

So here we all are at last.
Fools striving for a glimpse of wisdom, hobbling down a well-worn path having conversations with ourselves over questions whose answers aren't answers at all in our eyes.
Grownups told to become children again.
Scholars stripped of medals and left with furrowed brows at the base of a crude old tree.
Hopeless romantics.
Here we all are at last.

"It was perhaps an incautious suggestion to make to a person only too ready to write books upon the feeblest provocation."

I decided tonight, upon extrapolated urging from a dear friend interested in fishing some thoughts out of my overindulged mind, to create a small cache in which to store a few for her and anyone else bored or silly enough to find themself here.

So, whoever you may be, welcome to the autumn semester.

I considered being cheesy enough to include a "syllabus" for you, but decided that clashes too much with my nature and the nature of this space. So all you need to know is that I think this is going to be primarily a place reserved for my reflections on a book suggested to me by a friend who knew it was right up my alley.

The book is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.

I've only just read the first paragraph of the introduction, but judging by the title of this entry (a quote from said selection), it seems mister Chesterton and I are already on the same page...