Today I'm going back to "The Life You Save May Be Your Own."  I want to get better acquainted w/ Flannery O'Connor and her context, and then to read Regis Martin's work about her.

It suddenly occurred to me how much I need to take stock of the fact that these people whom I feel are worth reading lived on this same earth that I do now.  I don't really believe that is altogether true.  The world today feels like such a different time and space than even what it was when I was growing up that I couldn't feel more alien than if this were a different planet, an alternate earth.  I live with that view daily, so prominent in my mind, that I tend to forget the rest of the truth: although things are changing, this is still the same earth, this is still the on-going story of human-kind, God is still present, and His Story of redemption is still unfolding.

I think of the hymn "God Is Working His Purpose Out"

God is working His purpose out

As year succeeds to year;

God is working his purpose out,

And the time is drawing near;

Nearer and nearer draws the time,

The time that shall surely be,

When the earth shall be filled

With the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.

From utmost east to utmost west,

Where’er man’s foot hath trod,

By the mouth of many messengers

Goes forth the voice of God:

“Give ear to Me, ye continents,

Ye isles, give ear to Me,”

That the earth may be filled

With the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.

What can we do to work God’s work,

To prosper and increase

The brotherhood of all mankind,

The reign of the Prince of Peace?

What can we do to hasten the time,

The time that shall surely be,

When the earth shall be filled

With the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.

March we forth in the strength of God,

With the banner of Christ unfurled,

That the light of the glorious Gospel of truth

May shine throughout the world;

Fight we the fight with sorrow and sin

To set their captives free,

That the earth may be filled

With the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.

All we can do is nothing worth

Unless God blesses the deed;

Vainly we hope for the harvest-tide

Till God gives life to the seed;

Yet near and nearer draws the time,

The time that shall surely be,

When the earth shall be filled

With the glory of God

As the waters cover the sea.

This hymn is so grand and focuses on the sovereignty of God, and while it is all true, I need to focus on how this same great God who has worked in the past is yet working today, and sometimes in very small (seemingly insignificant) and subtle ways, more to the point: through individuals and the circumstances of their ordinary lives.

I've been reading more of Chesterton's St. Francis.  St. F. could be such a great role-model for me!  Except that I don't dream of being as free and generous as he, yet part of me longs to be like him.

What I like most about St. F is his embodiment of musician-beggar-fool-prophet-evangelist-all-through-simple-although-radical-life-choices.  He could say like Saint Paul "I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation."  (Philippians 4:12)

That's what I really want: to be content in all things, to keep my contentment anchored in Christ, regardless of the circumstances.  That is true freedom.

Authors Who Inspired Authors

A Beginning List of Authors and Books 
     that Inspired Authors who Inspire Me

Read by Day, Merton, O'Connor, & Percy
(According to Paul Elie's book The Life You Save May Be Your Own)

• Augustine
• Balzac
• Blake
• Agathe Christie
• Joseph Conrad
• DeQuincey
• Dickens
• Dostoevsky
• Dumas
• T.S. Eliot
• Galsworthy
• Gorky
• Gerard Manley Hopkins
• Victor Hugo
• William James' The Varieties of Religious Experience
• James Joyce
• Thomas a Kempis' The Imitation of Christ
• Kierkegaard
• Peter Kropotkin
• Jack London
• De Maupassant
• Frank Norris
• O'Neill
• The Papal Encyclicals
• The Psalms
• Upton Sinclair's The Jungle
• Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath
• St. Teresa of Avila
• St. Therese of Lisieux
• Tolstoy

Troubadours and Lovers

Chesterton characterized St. Francis in this way:

He was, to the last agonies of asceticism, a Troubadour.  He was a Lover.  He was a lover of God and he was really and truly a lover of men; possibly a much rarer mystical vocation.

In describing "the problem of St. Francis" he gives the clue to resolving that problem: "the clue to the asceticism and all the rest can best be found in the stories of lovers..."  All of St. Francis' seeming contradictions are "resolved in the simplicity of any noble love; only this was so noble a love that nine men out of ten have hardly even heard of it."

As Chesterton explains the purpose of his book, he advises:
"The reader cannot even begin to see the sense of a story that may well seem to him a very wild one, until he understands that to this great mystic his religion was not a thing like a theory but a thing like a love-affair."  He also reveals his personal motivation: "...my only claim even to attempt such a task is that I myself have for so long been in various stages of such a condition..."

God bless you Mr. Chesterton!

Chesterton's Francis

I'm reading G. K. Chesterton's Saint Francis of Assisi (with an introduction by Joseph Pearce).  Here's an excerpt from Pearce's introduction:

The admiration that Chesterton felt towards St. Francis was inextricably bound up with his belief in the superiority of childlike innocence over all forms of cynicism.  St. Francis and his followers were called the Jongleurs de Dieu because of the innocence of their jollity and the jollity of their innocence.  'The jongleur was properly a joculator or jester; sometimes he was what we should call a juggler.'  It was this mystical synthesis of laughter and humility, a belief that playing and praying go hand in hand, which was the secret of the saint's success.  Ultimately, however, the laughter and the humility were rooted in gratitude because, as Chesterton discerned with characteristic and Franciscan sagacity: 'There is no way in which a man can earn a star or deserve a sunset.'

I too believe childlike innocence is far superior to cynicism, that playing and praying go hand in hand, and that we can be grateful for all things, especially as we know all things come through Our Father's loving hands.