The claim that poetry or other art can somehow supply meaning in our lives when faith has gone "is like saying the wallpaper will save us when the wall has crumbled". T.S. Eliot
In my latest National Post column, I say the mass murder in a Quebec mosque should remind us to seek compassion in our hearts and a civil tone in public debate on difficult issues.
"Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die." Anonymous, variously attributed.
"Despotism may be able to do without faith, but freedom cannot." Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Serendipity is a wonderful word. And we owe it to the eccentric Horace Walpole who coined it in a letter on January 28 of 1754. It is a hard word to translate, perhaps because it speaks to an unexpected and obscure but encouraging facet of reality.
Serendipity loosely means a fortunate discovery. Walpole himself, the reviver of Gothic architecture in his Strawberry Hill House and practitioner of Gothic writing in The Castle of Otranto, derived his neologism it from a Persian fairy tale, The Three Princes of Serendip, in which the heroes were, Walpole wrote, "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". But it doesn’t just mean blind luck.
It means that when people are engaged in a worthy quest, in a suitably hopeful frame of mind, they often come across something even better than they were seeking. It reminds me of a maxim I acquired from an in-law’s publisher (an example, I think, of serendipity in that I was not expecting to gain wisdom at the book launch where it happened) that in life you must be ready to be lucky.
It sounds silly, perhaps. But it depends on the important truth that, except at the extremes, the difference between lucky and unlucky people is far less the mix of good, bad and ugly that fate sends them but their alertness to the good things. "Unlucky" people often fail to notice breaks they aren’t expecting.
In my view serendipity goes further still. It speaks to a certain beneficial substructure to a universe that often seems on the surface to present precisely the paradoxical mix of indifference and hostility that H.P. Lovecraft devoted himself to depicting graphically. And it justifies a joke that comes from the unlikely and superficially undesirable source known as Woody Allen, that life is like two old ladies discussing the food in their retirement residence.
It’s awful, says one, bland, pasty, salty and lukewarm, really just horrible. Yes, sighs the other, and such small portions too.
There really is something good here, although to find it we often need that elusive and surprising quality given such an oddly fitting name by Walpole. Serendipity. It rolls off the tongue and, I hope, into your life.
"the sweet humiliation of organic life." C.S. Lewis That Hideous Strength
With the 100th anniversary of Canada's great victory at Vimy Ridge fast approaching, I'm delighted to announce that the book version of my documentary The Great War Remembered is now available for purchase.
The First World War was the defining event of the 20th century, shaping the modern world in ways we still feel very strongly today. Modern technology and logistics created unprecedented slaughter, and partly as a result the long, bitter, bloody conflict undermined faith in Western civilization. But it was a necessary war and the Allies did win it, with pivotal contributions from Canada, which "found itself" in the war and especially at Vimy, not just as a nation, but as a free nation determined to defend liberty under law.
It is appropriate that we remember the costs of the war and lament the loss and the missed opportunities. But we should also remember, and celebrate, the determined spirit that stood up to aggression on behalf of a way of life well worth defending even at this terrible cost.
Order your copy today and take a timely, fresh look at an often misunderstood conflict central to the modern world.
p.s. American and international shoppers should purchase directly through Amazon.
p.p.s. We also have the Kindle version available, here.
"Human nature demands ritual everywhere. Abolish your ritual, and you get an inferior ritual. Destroy your impressive ceremony, and all you get in return is an unimpressive ceremony." G.K. Chesterton in Illustrated London News March 17, 1906, quoted in Gilbert! Vol. 6 #3 (December 2002)