Orthodoxy Notes & Snoring Scholar's Notes

Snoring Scholar (aka Sarah Reinhard) is going to sharing her notes on her reading of  G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy . Come along on this journey - join in with your comments or just do a bit of friendly lurking!  Go to her blog each TUESDAY to stay keep up with the posts.  
Here is part of Sarah's note about it.

I’ll be blogging about Orthodoxy on Tuesdays. I’d love to hear your thoughts, too, and if you care to join me, you can download free copies of it in many different places. It’s considered a classic, and, really, it’s not that long (though what it lacks in pages it more than makes up for in depth of ideas).
. . . . This is the kind of book that I will be able to come back to and get something new out of it every time. It’s challenging to think of reading this book as an investment. But I can’t help wanting to write about what I’m reading…take this out of the introduction:

We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without being merely comfortable. It is this achievement of my creed that I shall chiefly pursue in these pages.

Chesterton wrote Orthodoxy years before he became Catholic, which makes it even more interesting to me, because I’ve seen it referred to as a specifically Catholic classic.

I have found the Chesterton 101 section of the ACS website helpful, and I purchased Dale Ahlquist’s books about Chesterton, The Apostle of Common Sense and Common Sense 101

I don’t promise that my weekly blogging will be insightful or anything more than just a bunch of rambling. I might be the person behind SnoringScholar.com, but the “scholar” part is more what I aim for than what I achieve.   And that’s the last time I’m giving a disclaimer.


Chesterton 101
Podcasts
Videos
Snoring Scholar
You might find Dale Ahlquist’s book, The Apostle of Common Sense helpful in your Chesterton reading.

Chesterton Quote - A Woman's Function

How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about [arithmetic] , and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? 
How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?
No, a woman’s function is laborious because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.  
~ G. K. Chesterton

Defending Something When You Are Entirely Convinced

A quote from GK Chesterton about why we so often struggle to explain our faith. This is from a wonderful blog called, Why I Am Catholic.

“It is very hard for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “Why do you prefer civilisation to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase . . . and the coals in the coal-scuttle . . . and pianos . . . and policemen.” The whole case for civilisation is that the case for it is complex. It has done so many things. But that very multiplicity of proof which ought to make reply overwhelming makes reply impossible. There is, therefore, about all complete conviction a kind of huge helplessness. The belief is so big that it takes a long time to get it into action. And this hesitation chiefly arises, oddly enough, from an indifference about where one should begin. All roads lead to Rome; which is one reason why many people never get there. In the case of this defence of the Christian conviction I confess that I would as soon begin the argument with one thing as another; I would begin it with a turnip or a taximeter cab.—GKC, Orthodoxy, Ch. 6

Resources:
The American Chesterton Society 

G. K. Chesterton's Works on the Web

Make Our Spirits Lighter

Holy God, bear us upward toward you.

Make our spirits lighter, more joyful.

Teach us how to live without fretting,
without the anxieties that so often obscure
our view of you in your high and holy place,
that heaven which is our true home.
A prayer from the book


In case you are reading this, dear husband or daughter -- I would cherish any book by this author!
Some of his most enduring books include The Everlasting Man, (which led C.S. Lewis to become a Christian) and The Napoleon of Notting Hill (which inspired Michael Collins to lead a movement for Irish independence).

He is quoted by Christians at all ends of the spectrum. G.K Chesterton is an Englishman and a convert to the Catholic faith. He is sometimes referred to as the most unjustly neglected writer of our time. One reason might be his versatility and the inability for modern thinkers, theologians and commentators to pigeonhole him.

In the edition of Advent and Christmas Wisdom, (pictured and linked above) each day's reflection includes a selection from one of Chesterton's finest works, a suitable Scripture verse, an appropriate prayer, and an exercise.

H/T for helping me find this book! A Bit of the Blarney

What’s Wrong with the World

The London Times once asked a number prominent people to write essays on the topic, What’s Wrong with the World.

G. K. Chesterton reply is the shortest and most to the point in history:

Dear Sirs:
I am.
Sincerely, G. K. CHESTERTON